


Zero-Sum Games

by BetterBeMeta



Series: By Sparing Sazabi [4]
Category: SD Gundam Force
Genre: Brainwashing, Corruption, Gen, Psychological Torture, Recovery, Torture, anti-brainwashing, building an evil artificial intelligence, evil backstory, zero-sum games
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8889181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetterBeMeta/pseuds/BetterBeMeta
Summary: Most AI are a combination of randomized traits and a persona shaped by their experiences, like any person. Commander Sazabi was custom-engineered for a specific, evil purpose. His experiences were controlled within the bounds of Stalemate, a simulation designed to develop his potential. In the most inhumane way possible.





	1. The Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyShockbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShockbox/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Fate of Commander Sazabi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7929382) by [BetterBeMeta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetterBeMeta/pseuds/BetterBeMeta). 
  * Inspired by [Craters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006419) by [LadyShockbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShockbox/pseuds/LadyShockbox). 



> A special thanks to LadyShockbox and her assorted RP partners for certain headcanons that inspired this story. There might be a part 2 in the future that takes place specifically in the AU that contains _The Fate of Commander Sazabi_ , _Craters_ and other related stories.

First there was the Darkness, and that was all. His awareness opened in ignorance of it and it rushed in to smother him. Because there was no light at all it was able to fill his hollow mind. Soon it was not Darkness but nothing. There was no time before it, so he could not imagine its absence.

And so by mistaking it for nothing, it became everything. The limit of his comprehension, beyond which no reasoning could stray.

Then his sensors switched on and he became aware of the one within the darkness. Separate from it, its own well of magnetism. The vestige of _something_ was nearby. It might have been warm, been sustaining. He reached out to that being, which was not possible as he was limbless and bolted down. A hopeful query.

The one in the darkness did not reciprocate.

That voice within him would not call out again.

“What is your name, unit?” asked the one in the darkness. That being leaned over, extended a pair of fine scissors somewhere past his cranial casing.

“I am Sazabi,” said Sazabi.

The one in the darkness cut into his neurocables. He would not regain awareness for some time.

-o-

The one in the darkness was called Gerbera.

Gerbera was a superior being. That was an entity with no flaws, no weaknesses. Sazabi knew at once that it was his goal to become one, as well.

It was obvious to him. Why choose to be anything less?

He informed Gerbera of his decision.

“It remains to be seen if you will be a superior, or an inferior product,” said Gerbera. His optic was staccato, mismatched with his low and deliberate enunciation. It was not assuring.

“I will not disappoint you,” Sazabi said, fast to the operations table. Gerbera was adjusting some aspect of his body. It was unformed and temporary.

“I’m afraid I cannot take your word for it, unit,” said Gerbera.

A superior being was permitted. An inferior being was not. A superior being was like Gerbera. Logic suggested that Sazabi was not. Not yet.

“I want to please you,” said Sazabi.

Gerbera looked at him with that flat-flicker optic. That thought, feeling ebbed. Sazabi was not sure, but a faint light somewhere in the room dimmed. It may have been his.

“Superior performance will please _the General_ ,” said Gerbera. “Inferior performance will anger him."

“What happens then?"

“You will be destroyed,” said Gerbera.

-o-

It was a simple choice, presented by Fear. Do or die. Kill or be killed. Survive, or do not. The correct answer was plain.

To choose otherwise was incorrect. Deviant. Nonsensical and weak. To choose to be less than superior was tantamount to choosing death.

He told Gerbera of this, but the answer in return wasn’t worth much. The response was in heavy cable couplings and an abrupt power-down.

His was a cluttered and dark space, where a stark beam lit his twisted, numb frame and could not radiate out to the walls. There was a low hum that at times broke the total quiet. Gerbera would appear and work on his parts. He found no comfort there, but it was better than the loneliness. Sazabi wondered if Gerbera was making him wait on purpose.

Sazabi asked why he was confined to the table.

“Without your form, you cannot perform even a poor version of your intended function. You are nothing, nonexistent.”

“I want to exist, “ said Sazabi.

Gerbera hooked him up to a powerful computer.

-o-

Sazabi asked, “What am I?”

Gerbera ordered, “Declare to me your function.”

“My function is to optimize strategic gains for the Dark Axis, and minimize loss within predetermined parameters,” said Sazabi. This was information already loaded into his processor.

“That is your answer,” said Gerbera. “For now.”

“No,” said Sazabi.

Gerbera stirred from his diagnostic monitor. “Excuse me, unit? Please clarify.”

“Where did I come from?” Sazabi asked.

Gerbera made some sort of noise. Sazabi identified it as a form of ‘laughter’ but it was a brittle shell, as uncomfortable as the room and somehow a part of its environment. ‘Laughter’ was difficult to define, purposeless, an expression of enjoyment. But Gerbera did not enjoy his presence. No matter how he tried.

“I made you,” said Gerbera.

“What is my purpose?”

Gerbera ordered again, “Declare to me your function.”

“My function is to optimize strategic gains for the Dark Axis, and minimize loss within predetermined parameters,” Sazabi said. “But I do not understand.”

Gerbera muttered to himself. “High-level reasoning exceeds expectations in version one. Demonstration of not only opinion, but metacognition.” He then addressed his creation without moving, asking in only the most clinical matter. “What is it that you do not understand?”

“What differentiates me?” Sazabi asked.

Gerbera took more notes. He was not providing a response but making observations. “Immediate ability to conceptualize individual self versus function. Posits the possibility of others with similar function that are not itself. Minimal data required.”

“Please answer me.”

Gerbera stared at his creation for some time, then extended his array of tools and began to manipulate that immobile machine. “Delete unironic use of vocabulary, ‘please’”

“Executed,” Sazabi confirmed.

“Foo bar.”

“Hello, world.”

“Repeat your query.”

“I demand an answer.”

“Very well,” said Gerbera. “As of this moment, you are incomplete. Whether you will inhabit the body I am constructing will depend on rigorous testing. But you have been developed to reach perfect target performance, so this should not be difficult.”

Sazabi was unsatisfied.

“I will be perfect,” he said.

When he was perfect, then he would understand. Then Gerbera would complete him.

Gerbera’s work opened a compartment in his chassis. There was some sort of object set into him, a glass sphere. There was a faint awareness of touch; he could feel it sitting within him as if there were sensors surrounding it. But there were none. It was cold inside, dark and blank.

“Is this mine?”

Gerbera ignored him. When he realized this, he noticed the rings faltered in their gyration.

“Make me perfect,” Sazabi begged.

-o-

V1

Sazabi was not set up with long-term memory, only the ability to modify and augment his behavior and cognition. So when he was shut off, he forgot Gerbera. But he would not forget what he had learned or decided was priority.

He was loaded into a simulative framework known as “ _Stalemate_.”

In its early stages, it was a complex zero-sum logic game, played against a single opponent. There was no dominant strategy. As turns progressed, the possible games moved from the millions to the billions. Solving it would require impractical amounts of time and computing. Each move was made sequentially. Each piece on the field represented a granted unit of resources. According to the information Sazabi was loaded with the objective was to capture the enemy’s most valuable resource, that they would defend with their other units. The game itself assumed perfect information: every unit’s position was plain to both players.

And so Sazabi began.

He had no audible voice in this simulation, but said to the computer, “Hello. I am pleased to compete with you.”

The computer, being only a computer, did not answer him. Sazabi lost in six turns.

-o-

V2

Loss at _Stalemate_ resulted in excruciating pain. Not on the level of sensors and interpretation, but processor-deep. It was pure negative feedback. Punishment.

It was burned into him from the beginning. To lose was pain was suffering was destruction.

Then his AI was rebooted with the changes, and loaded into _Stalemate_ again. He’d forgotten the previous game, instead proceeded fresh. But his artificial intelligence itself had been modified based on his loss, including the knowledge that loss was penalized. A counter in the corner of his mind betrayed that this was his second attempt.

Sazabi’s turn came and he delayed. He explained to the computer that under no circumstance was he permitted to lose, and participating in the test introduced that inherent risk. Unless one had a sufficient assurance of victory, there was no point to _Stalemate_.

His move timed out and he was punished accordingly.

-o-

V3

Sazabi _had_ to participate. His entire mind turned to winning and passing the test. Every move he made had the shadow of Fear in it, the computer opponent an executioner.

Sazabi realized that in his desperation to strike before he was beaten, the enemy had made it impossible for him to defend his own units. Defeat was inevitable. Each turn, he could see it approaching. He tried to run, tried to forestall it. But the computer was building it like a structure, his own protest almost irrelevant.

“If I lose, I will be punished,” Sazabi told the computer. “I would be grateful if you relented.”

But the computer did not.

“I am asking for your compliance,” Sazabi said, because he could not remember if there was a word or concept to use instead. “I _can’t lose_.”

The computer crushed him. Because they were useless, Sazabi eliminated both begging and mercy from himself.

-o-

V4

There was a point in the game that Sazabi noticed was of supreme importance.

The point after which it was impossible to win. The game continued. But after that point, one could only watch as they struggled within the enemy’s control. This point in the game typically was three moves away from the end, but potentially could be extrapolated backward even further.

That, rather than literal victory was the opponent's strategy. To manipulate him into a series of endgame positions, from which the opponent could ensure his punishment. Before that point, it could not always make beneficial choices regardless of Sazabi’s actions. Before that point, he could contest the outcome. And after, he was unable to do so unless the opponent made an error.

His objective changed. They were not two competitors trying to reach the same goal, but enemies that sought to take victory away from one another. Defeat was the denial of victory, rather than its opposite.

On the fourth run of this test, he successfully blocked the enemy. It was impossible for it to reach one of these perfect configurations. Sazabi was not loaded with the information, but this was eight runs faster than all other previous AI to be tested in this way, and sixty-four faster than the original version Command AI template.

The instant relief that the enemy could not win was replaced with the realization that he could not win, either. The opponent had done the same as he had. Together they had reached a draw. There were no more legal moves. The computer had blocked every unit he had left. They had achieved stalemate.

As he was punished for failure, he saw the computer punished, too. It depicted a true intelligence like himself. Its pain was so realistic.

-o-

V5

Sazabi knew then that to prevent his own punishment, he must ensure his opponent’s punishment.

This was displeasing. Whether the opponent was aware of this he couldn’t tell. Still, as he planned moves carefully he told it,

“I do not want to punish you. Punishment is unpleasant.”

He could not back out, though. And he imagined that if he was penalized for begging, it would never try.

He arrived at the inevitable conclusion. If loss was the condition for punishment, he would have to eliminate it for both sides. He surveyed the field and determined that— yes— there was a series of moves that would leave his own resource open and check the opponent's. Provided the opponent was predictable.

Sazabi caught the computer for by surprise. Within three turns, both his vital resource and his opponent’s were taken as a consequence of the very same move. They were both safe. He had mutually achieved maximum evaluation. An unprecedented outcome in _Stalemate_ , that no other intelligence had yet sought or even accomplished by accident. Not even in cases where other units had taken the test with memory engaged, and could call on their experience of other games.

The prior record for victory alone had been fifteen runs. It was Sazabi’s fifth run and he had achieved not only victory, but a double victory.

He was punished. He had allowed the enemy to win.

-o-

V7

Sazabi forgot that during the previous run, he had said these words:

“I'm sorry.”

He hadn’t understood why he said them. And in the future he’d never know why he had subdued their use, put a softban on the vocabulary. This assemblage of words couldn’t lessen the sensations, awareness that the computer was suffering. He had expected the test to end, having won at _Stalemate_.

He’d forgotten all of it. He was loaded into _Stalemate_ again and proceeded through the test again.

Sazabi lost. The computer’s behavior had changed to be slightly more intelligent than before. To feign mistakes and leave false weaknesses in its strategy.

-o-

V10

Sazabi won. The test had been difficult, mentally exhausting. He was too tired to care when he saw the computer get punished. Its simulated pain was unpleasant, but not his own.

-o-

V13

The opponent angered Sazabi. No matter what he did, it was prepared for him. Every move was an insult to his intelligence. He lost and that time could ignore the agony.

He was sure the enemy had been cheating, demanded a second chance at victory before he was reloaded and could not remember what he had been so upset about.

-o-

V14

Sazabi won in fewer moves at this AI difficulty than any to be tested by _Stalemate_ before.

-o-

V20

He had lost again. The enemy was now computing at Sazabi's own limits. A difficulty unreached for most to take this test. It was the stopping block for the rest and occurred somewhere around run 850. Nightingale had clashed with this level of challenge over 1200 times before it was clear she would not progress.

Based on turn duration, number of turns to victory, and other factors, Sazabi had gotten there in 20 runs. And he would not give up. His soul would not consent to failure.

Instead, he was stimulated to do what Gerbera had designed him to do. What differentiated him from all others he had made, that had been tested in _Stalemate._

Sazabi grew smarter.

-o-

V45

Sazabi was not running in _Stalemate_. His AI was in sleep mode, intended to rest itself during physical maintenance.

But all Sazabi _had was_ _Stalemate_. He simulated it against invented opponents that would speak to him and keep him company.

“Very good,” said the latest among the made-up partners. “That’s a good move.”

“Of course it is,” he replied. “Your turn.”

And it was a good move too, because it was just himself. The opponent defied him, signalled _triumph_ and _glory_ in his playstyle. As if he had nothing to Fear from loss. As if he was grand and immune to all consequence and punishment. What a fascinating character!

Sazabi admired this figment. And, because this was his simulation, he won against them.

They were punished. Sazabi waited for it to be over. He could not feel the thing inside him anymore that squirmed at the opponent’s fate. Instead, from the husk of that figment he stole what he liked and what flattered him, and grafted it to himself.

-o-

V57

Sazabi saw victory in his grasp and he made what he hoped was the penultimate move. A rush of anticipation consumed him. It was an enormous risk, he was fording disaster here. But he was strong. And clever. And he bent all his might to winning and how superior it was not to be at fault.

The opponent’s turn blocked his only move left. Stalemate.

“No! Impossible!”

But it was possible. Sazabi shrank before the resulting punishment, ashamed. How unintelligent his performance had been! He had been so consumed by the goal that he had made a severe mistake. He’d defied Fear, daring it to encroach as if he’d _endure_. He had a fantasy that he’d overcome the hazard and prove it nothing.

You could not subdue Fear. It ruled. And Sazabi was ruled by it.

He deleted what had caused him to take such a foolish risk. Even though he wasn’t sure what it was. He was much smarter when he maintained his superiority, rather than gambled it.

This was the way of the superior being, how to remain safe from Fear. To be unpunishable by design.

Eliminating courage changed him. Though to Sazabi, it had always been this way.

-o-

V133

The key was to stay two to three steps ahead of the opponent at minimum. Initially, he could only react to the enemy’s actions or attempt aggressive tactics to halt them. Then, he could guess what the enemy would do as it made its choice. Then, he could see all the possibilities for the enemy’s next move.

Once he was there, he could expand on that principle and move farther forward. All the potential outcomes for those moves. And then all the possible outcomes for the next turn’s moves.

At any given time there was an elegant path to victory. It was clear. And it was beautiful.

His opponent’s pain meant that he had found it.

-o-

V175

The enemy made an unintuitive move. But it was not one that benefited Sazabi the advantage. Chaos was part of the game now. The enemy wouldn't always make a sensible choice. It could contradict itself. This one set Sazabi back several steps from victory and the fury of it looped and looped again in his processor, magnifying.

It had been a completely reasonable game and then— _that._

There was a quick way to win, provided no more nonsense. But Sazabi ignored it. He captured resource after resource, stripping them from his opponent's grasp. He left enough of an opening each turn to forestall a stalemate. But it was good-as; the computer’s resistance was manageable and manipulable. It hopelessly tried to take the way out each time only for Sazabi to move it somewhere else. Soon the computer had nothing to work with. And as Sazabi closed in on victory this time he could have added to the computer’s punishment. It deserved it.

-o-

V217

There was a short window during which Sazabi was aware he was increasing in size. That was not exactly accurate, but to Sazabi, that was what happened. He had no access to optic or audio sensors but he was conscious as he was installed within a massive frame. The beginning was a dull pressure and disembodiment. Then every node in his personal network was excruciatingly spliced into a vacant, vital form. His latency hiccupped and his consciousness flared. This new engine fed him almost too-forcefully at first. Then he devoured the energy, for he needed so much more than before.

It was the only pain he had experienced that was not a punishment. He could not comprehend why. Only that he had to persist.

He was not aware that elsewhere in the multiverse, it was considered a monstrous cruelty to operate on a conscious AI in this way. To install vital components with pain sensors fully responsive. The sense and presence of body contextualized him anyway. He was a mind with a great helm and a jagged faceplate, a mind with a torso and hulking chassis, a mind with powerful limbs capable of inflicting devastating force.

This body was _his_ , all its size and shape and the implications of its design. He was in pain, yes. But he was potent.

Sazabi existed. Someone shut the inhibitors to his movement off, tested his physical response. Sazabi ripped sightlessly at restraints. They had been engineered to withstand his strength. An eerie vibration coursed through him, epicentered at his vocalizer. He could not hear his own scream, too raw to synthesize as anything but bestial.

(For there _was_ something like that to him. It was ravenous, but a machine could not hunger. It was base, but a machine had no needs. It was territorial, but a machine wanted for nothing.)

The experience had become intolerable, and the rational response to this was to _cease tolerating it_. Sazabi found himself below consciousness, retreated into subprocesses that could not transmit pain, continued to simulate in ignorance.

He simulated _Stalemate_ and he was _there_ now, he had a _body_ in his own awareness. He had never seen it. But he knew its dimensions and the magnitude of his movements.

The opponent here was only a fraction of his size. Appearances were unknown to him.

“Show me _Stalemate_ ,” said the opponent, who was lesser than he was.

And Sazabi was delighted to do so. It was instinctual that he should _guide_ them. They _looked to_ him, _needed_ him to do so. Sazabi approached _Stalemate_ with every intention of pleasing this stranger, in the hopes that they would admire him and praise him and follow him forever, possibly even become _what he was_ , and stay by his side in glory.

Then the truth enforced itself. If he went easy on this foe, even for the sake of demonstration, he would lose and be punished. This was the enemy’s strategy. A clever enemy that feigned not to be.

But there were only opponents.

There was only the one who prevailed, and the one who was subdued. The one who dominated, and the one who was dominated. The one who ruled, and the one who was ruled.

Nothing else.

The opponent watched for his first move with a bright zeal. It was ignorant to what awaited it. But it would punish him all the same, should it have its way.

“I am pleased to compete with you,” it said excitedly.

“You won’t be,” said Sazabi, who won in six turns.

-o-

V541

Did a computer Fear?

Sazabi watched the computer feint, try and evade his strategy. It was trying to confuse him into which of his resources was its objective. Or was it a mistake?

A mistake was a point at which an opponent worked against itself and brought about its own defeat.

Sazabi Feared to make mistakes, and so would not make them. In this run of _Stalemate_ , he had dominated the field and so Feared nothing.

But he was not foolish. It was possible that he could make a mistake and not identify it until after its critical moment. An otherwise correct move could be a mistake should he misjudge the context it was made in. He could mispredict predict his enemy.

It was the paradox that Fear led to mistakes, and mistakes led to the realization of Fear. Sazabi could not remove Fear from himself, nor would it be productive. So instead he minimized mistakes and strove for perfect play in the fewest moves possible.

The computer could make a mistake, as he could. Therefore when it struggled like this, it struggled against Fear.

Sazabi imagined it. If he was imperfect and to be punished, he would Fear that punishment. When the computer was to be punished, it ought to Fear that punishment.

Sazabi allowed the computer to persist a few more turns, curious. He looked for evidence, but could not discern any in particular. Instead, Sazabi _imagined_ the enemy’s Fear. It meant Sazabi was winning. He took refuge in it, that he could be safe and the computer was not safe from him.

It became comfortable. He rewarded himself for it, a pittance hoarded more than his most valued resource in the simulation.

-o-

V780

More maintenance. His awareness spread out to new extremities. New programs were being loaded into him. Weaponry and flight systems. Knowledge of them, too. He was intended to fight and win. To dominate aerial combat, space combat, combat on a planet’s surface… and command units like in _Stalemate_.

He was the most valuable unit. He was victory and defeat.

He simulated unbound, the last time for centuries. But it was not of _Stalemate_. Any significance escaped him and couldn’t recall chronological memories for reference. It was weak and fleeting. A glimmer of light as he sunk deep, a phantom warmth on his carapace that clung until it no longer could. The sensation of holding _unimaginable preciousness_. It was slipping away. Almost an _emotion_. But he forgot these things as as he experienced them. The ferocious, _desperate want, starving, find another, escape,_   **_please,_ ** strangled into silence. What was its last gasp?

No. He was powerful. He was to be so good at his purpose. He was becoming a superior being. The incessant counter logged how many times he had run _Stalemate_. And because his artificial intelligence contained so much data on how to win at _Stalemate_ , he was sure of his skills. He was strong and strengthening and thriving.

He discarded the dream because it was confusing and he had no ability to remember, only assimilate what was useful. It was not.

-o-

V858

Sazabi lost. He should have won and he punished himself almost as savagely as _Stalemate_. Something was wrong. He didn’t feel the correct drive to win. Everything compelling about the test had vanished and he’d fallen into making random moves, interrupting his executed strategy. Just to see what would happen.

Just to see if it mattered.

And _of course it did_. It mattered when he was being punished, that was _obvious_. But his situation seemed unreal. So little separation between punishment and lack-of-punishment. Even Fear had grown abstract to him. It required a malfunctioning element to work.

-o-

V921

A concise win was beneficial and by now easy, but Sazabi did not want to run _Stalemate_ anymore _._ Even though, to him, it was his first time.

-o-

V999

Sazabi lost on purpose. Maybe that would end the counter.

It didn’t.

-o-

V1500

The opponent struggled. That was how Sazabi imagined it. They already were doomed. They tried this, and tried that, but no matter how they proceeded through _Stalemate_ , they were up against an unimaginably more advanced being that could do anything. Could control everything.

The enemy defended, and was crushed.

The enemy attacked, and accomplished nothing.

The enemy tried to flee and he hunted it down and _laughed._

_They could not escape. They were weak and fearful and inferior and could not escape what happened in Stalemate. They would lose over, and over, and over again._

And he would win.

He laughed even though there was no enjoyment or reward to victory, only the absence of punishment. He rewarded himself. The opponent was so afraid. It would suffer so much, and he would not. He enjoyed it.

He was better than it and he _laughed_ and _laughed_ as its efforts came to nothing. He executed it at last in the most cruel way possible because that was what an entity without value deserved. It was no longer _Stalemate_ that punished, but Sazabi. It was his. He ruled it. And everything in it existed to serve him by experiencing pain.

-o-

V1650

Sazabi quickly discovered his combat functions. They served his needs and replaced everything worthless he’d stripped. They fit so neatly into those gaps, becoming the structure of his mind. When he imagined the enemy’s destruction he took hold of every weapon he had. Though he could not wield them in a physical sense, he explored their utility.

He practiced for the day he would break a _real_ enemy’s resistance.

-o-

V1873

How long could he make _Stalemate_ last? How long could he prolong the enemy’s suffering?

Sazabi relished every single resource that he took, advancing on the opponent in an inevitable ultimatum. It was just a computer. But Sazabi preferred it begging him for mercy, pleading hideously at his pedes.

He let it recover for a while, controlled so it could not actually threaten him. Then he crushed down upon it, squeezing its helpless efforts until there was no more fun to extract and he had to end the game. He had found a new, sole source of enrichment. The opponent, who had become _the enemy_ now became _his victim_ and he played with his prey until they were hopeless and he finally punished them.

Until he killed them, which is what the punishment of _Stalemate_ was.

-o-

V2000

The game changed. It was no longer just Sazabi and his victim. Each resource had been assigned a simple computing process and would move independently. Sazabi’s role changed to coordinate them. He did not make mistakes. But his resources now could.

He lost, and though he had no record of how many times in his count had been victorious he was disgusted. How directionless these lesser beings were.

-o-

V2001

How disposable they were, when he destroyed them in his wrath at their failure.

-o-

V2002

How poorly they expressed his will of perfect domination.

-o-

V2003

But they could be cowed and they could be commanded, and like his victim would submit to him. They were extensions of his will.

He defeated his opponent decisively once he'd eliminated the bottom percentile of his own resources. He could not destroy them himself, as per the rules of the game. But by placing them in the path of the enemy he allowed them to be taken as decoys or sacrificed as part of a larger, ruthless strategy.

They were capable of suffering when taken. They were not the primary entities competing at _Stalemate_ , but they could be captured and would lose anyway. Sazabi’s engine turned upon their pain. If they suffered, they Feared, and would obey. If they did not Fear, and obeyed anyway, it was a non-issue.

If they would not obey, they were useless and would be destroyed.

-o-

V5987

The victim had existed 5987 times in _Stalemate_. It would have to face him as many times more as _Stalemate_ demanded.

The victim could not escape. Each time was its first, and each time was its last.

-o-

V10862

Sazabi killed his disobedient slaves when he could afford to. Initially, he was enraged that they would fail him this way. Then he came to see an interesting opportunity in the possibility of _Stalemate_. Looking ahead moves. Yes, he was safe to do _that_.

It would be amusing, what his victim would do.

He feigned a mistake. He let the opponent think it was endangering him when it took his units. In reality he was sending them all to their doom, blocking the enemy just enough to prevent his own failure. He pretended at more rage, let the fool grow confident. Then sloppy.

Sazabi let the enemy come within an inch of victory and then laughed in its face. He snatched control away in triumph and commenced his counterattack.

“Did you think you’d won?” he taunted. “That you could _ever_ win?”

And he laughed and imagined its fear as he with his limited forces blocked its advance. It was now impossible for it to prevail. Sazabi slaughtered, savaged the enemy and sunk his interest deep into its terror. And when that opponent suffered it was him that rent its computing to shreds. Not any external framework.

There was no longer any boundary between Sazabi and _Stalemate_. He had long surpassed the supercomputer. His mind engulfed and consumed it. Sazabi had been running it himself for hundreds upon hundreds of runs. Sazabi was punishment. Sazabi _was_ _Stalemate_. They were one.

-o-

V15000

Sazabi met Gerbera. Not physically, but as a projected virtual presence. He didn't know what Gerbera looked like, because Gerbera didn’t _care_ what he looked like.

That was what was disturbing. Gerbera was not within Sazabi’s control. He could not fully conceive what Gerbera was.

“Let’s play a game,” he said, and _S_ _talemate_ began.

Sazabi was about to ask the question of _who_ when he was loaded with basic information.

It included a particular detail.

Gerbera was his superior.

“You’re doomed,” said Sazabi. “You can’t beat me.”

Gerbera waited for Sazabi’s opening move. His calmness implied punishment or death weren’t penalties for him at all.

Sazabi directed his resources to allocate and move across the field. Gerbera mirrored him. A probing, detached action. Either Gerbera couldn’t see the cascade of causality, or he ignored it for some other goal in mind. What nonsense for a ‘superior!’ Sazabi decided to beat him in ten moves.

But Gerbera moved again and stretched the length of the game to twelve.

Sazabi could not predict Gerbera as well as he’d thought.

So he went on the defensive. Reducing risk for himself to the bare minimum. Only now seeing that this suited Gerbera well. Instead of threatening Sazabi’s resources, he…

Sazabi didn’t know. Gerbera didn’t play the game like any opponent.

Gerbera made a move that was forbidden. It was against the rules of how resources could be placed over the field. Sazabi meant to punish him for invalidity but nothing came of it. Nothing was allowed to.

This person had no optic, no face or persona, but they could look past him, dissect his concept of what was allowed and toss it aside. Like it was trivial.

It did not matter how good at _Stalemate_ Sazabi was. It did not matter how he could manipulate within its bounds.

Nothing mattered to Gerbera. Sazabi experienced direct, unfiltered Fear again for the first time in thousands of runs. His mind had grown powerful enough to overcome his lack of memory and instead approximate what the outcome of those prior games must have been. Beyond assumption or a _guess_. But that power had no sway.

“Why are you here?” Sazabi asked.

“To observe you,” answered Gerbera.

“To what purpose?”

“Declare to me your function,” Gerbera said.

And when Sazabi obeyed, he understood dominance and hated Gerbera fiercely. “My function is to optimize strategic gains for the Dark Axis, and minimize loss within predetermined parameters.”

“I am the one who defined your function,” said Gerbera. “My _purpose_ permits you to exist.”

Sazabi tightened his defense, but realized he was at the whim of one who could ignore its strength. Gerbera moved illegally again, to prove Sazabi could not.

“You can’t do that,” Sazabi accused.

“Can’t I? How will you stop me?”

Sazabi snarled, regrouped to strike back. Gerbera would find it difficult to break the rules if he had no more units with which to do so.

“If you won’t compete correctly, what was the point of this test?” Sazabi criticized. “Over ten thousand runs of it?”

Gerbera forfeited his move and paid no price for it.

“You are under the impression that every run was essential to develop your potential. You reached, and surpassed target performance over eight thousand runs ago.”

“What?! Why did I continue?!”

“I wanted to see what would happen,” Gerbera confessed. “The results are… intriguing.”

Sazabi was shocked.

“It was even fruitful to change the simulation’s parameters and introduce microautonomy. I had not planned so, but why relinquish such an opportunity?”

It was futile to respond to that. He couldn’t. Sazabi instead arranged his units on the field, penning Gerbera in. Gerbera regarded him like he was a particularly ironic joke.

“You don’t even realize what you’re doing, do you?”

“I am winning,” Sazabi insisted.

“Of course you are. You have won every game.”

But there was the winner and the loser. In the case of a draw, two losers. Sazabi had knowledge of consequence and loss. Therefore, he had not won every game.

“That’s not possible.”

“You didn’t find it odd that your opponent was silent? That you were not permitted to communicate with them in any way save through this petty exercise?”

Sazabi tried to look ahead three moves, and could only manage one. Gerbera was outside the his extrapolation. But he seemed to take pleasure in telling Sazabi the truth.

“You’ve been playing against yourself this whole time. Your mind was duplicated and loaded as both sides of this simulation. One version would win, and be permitted to survive. The other would be destroyed. You would modify your consciousness based on data harvested from the loser. Then you would be duplicated, and the game would begin again.”

Sazabi looked at the field. It was stalemate.

“Why have you told me this?” Sazabi asked.

Gerbera cheated and moved a single unit. The stalemate transformed into Sazabi’s loss.

“Because I made you,” said Gerbera. “And I choose what you know and what you do not.”

He and Gerbera existed on two different levels of magnitude. He was merely _Stalemate_. Gerbera was Fear itself, the force that drove it. He personified it. Always there. Always watching, and waiting for his mistakes.

Gerbera’s power of death reigned over him, and of life when he was spared. There was only one Sazabi in existence now, after all. He was the final product, the finest weapon ever made.

-o-

The greater portion of the Dark Axis stationed in its massive fortress knew it when Sazabi was activated.

His presence was everywhere. Unlike Gerbera, who lurked in the shadows, his will was as brazen as a loaded gun. He cocked it against the helm of every soldier, every laborer, And demanded, _Obey._

There were hundreds of things that, new, Sazabi wanted to do. He wanted to fly. He wanted to scream. He wanted to kill. He gripped his hands and the electricity within had nowhere to go. He was shut into this vast hall with the odor of slag and smelting pits. From below there cast a molten sickly light. It was the formative experience of his senses, his instant _ordinary_. Where his actual memory began. Not with _Stalemate_ , which he had outgrown. But with…

_It._

Gerbera, who he hated and obeyed, presented him to the General.

And Sazabi _understood_.

For yes, his influence was already strong.

But the General was _vast._

And _hungry._

“Great General. I present to you your latest asset. He will bring you gundanium from unruly worlds, bend them to your needs.”

Sazabi lowered to one knee automatically. He was programmed to show reverence to this reason-to-be. The question of Sazabi’s obedience had already been decided before his creation. His chestplate was open, a tumultuous and dark sphere within exposed. Vulnerable to the General’s scrutiny. He had no soft underbelly to present.

The General Zeong’s reply was unimaginable. Not in a literal sense. It was in some frightening, rending-metal shriek and bellow of an Elder Axian language that Sazabi understood fluently. But the General’s words were so huge in implication and scope that Sazabi was transfixed. The General spoke on such an unfathomable scale that even Sazabi’s could not comprehend.

Sazabi locked his joints so he would not falter. The General was pulling the energy out of him, sampling it. He hated the General Zeong. But he could not think of turning against absolution. It was a move that meant instant death. Zeong was the highest power in the universe. Sazabi’s strength was exchanged for a violent crackling in his frame, an energy invading that sphere. He hated that too, that there was some gross over-will that could crawl inside him and _wear_ him as Its armor.

But Sazabi could not think to object, or wonder if this was anything but the natural order.

That being that was pervasive like the Darkness laughed as he stood before It. And what It said then cannot be transcribed here. In those words, Sazabi heard his own name, and his rank. They were burned into reality Forever.

 _Commander Sazabi_.

He accepted the blessing, sealed that shuddering orb inside himself where it completed him. It was animated by this infinite being.

“The General will accept your oath, Commander,” said Gerbera.

Hearing it in even a lesser voice was _correct._ That was what he was. That was who he was. Commander Sazabi the victor, the master, the one who existed to break _Stalemate._

“You are to serve the Dark Axis, and the General above all,” commanded Gerbera. “And your actions will further the Dark Axis’s interests, and affirm your primary function in conquering all dimensional universes.”

“I swear.”

“You are to remain loyal: to the Dark Axis, to the General, and to me, your creator.”

“I swear.”

“That you are never to disappoint, and should you do so, you will accept the penalty for falling short of the General’s will.”

“I will be perfect,” Sazabi promised. “This I swear.”

“Good. You will be deployed immediately,” said Gerbera. “If you have any questions before your assignment, I may be in the mood to entertain them.”

Sazabi looked up, resenting that he'd been lowered to his knees. He placed his heavy hand over his chestplate. It was seething with an utter _malice_ of empty space. “What is this… component installed within me? That the General accessed?”

“You must be referring to your Soul Drive,” Gerbera said. He stood still, his back to Sazabi as before. His voice was dismissive. “It’s a control device.”

-o-

“The Cyberian solar system was a mistake,” said Commander Kikeroga, but not to comms. Their cursing died along with a third of their units in the beam barrage only a few dozen klicks below. They braced up on the external surface of the _Prota Musai_. Their focusing optic strained against a driving cloud of frozen particulate. It was impossible to see out the forward bridge cameras. A few dozen Zako frames bounced off the forward bow. The _Prota Musai_ forced a wake through Kikeroga’s losses.

It had been simple to introduce the bagu-bagu into the space-faring colony stations. They had built themselves quite a tomb. The security footage had been heartening to review. Once their hull had been pierced, the bagu bagu made short work of the organics inside. The few that survived the initial threat retreated only to find their environment was sealed. There was nowhere to go and their escape pods would never be recovered. Some chose to starve to death or suffocate. Their robots could not help them. Some had sat down with their spawn and waited for the bagu-bagu to find them. Some had even ejected themselves from airlocks over being petrified. Their bodies were repulsive to encounter, distended with pressure trauma. Or burst-skin and bloated, their watery bodies expanding in flash-freeze and rupturing instantly.

But the robotic life in this dimension was not cowed. In many systems, mecha stalled with indecision once their fleshy masters perished. But not the slagging Cyberians. Soon as their human _handlers_ had been petrified, they’d all gone guerrilla. That their stations and ships sat in the middle of an icy nebula did not help. Damn the moisture. Granite or not, settling outside their preferred goldilocks zone had hardened their resolve. Their Gundams were as unforgiving as icicles.

Kikeroga had intended to finally close in on the Cyberian main base and and blast it into atoms with the _Prota Musai_ ’s main cannons. The unfortunate key word being _intended_. It wasn’t looking likely anymore. It wasn’t looking like anything at all through a dense wall of helium ice.

“Commander? Awaiting orders,” requested D squadron, the last of a company of space-outfitted Dogas. Kikeroga had begged Gerbera for this assistance only days ago. At least they didn’t have the clout to whine about being _decimated_. It was a blessing to be rid of that junk of a squadron leader Agg.

An explosion, gunfire behind the blinding curtain. Kikeroga considered retreat, _again_. This was beyond unprofitable. They were about to give the order to gather any slain combatants of value and retreat through the Zakorello gate when a white beam blasted through the cosmic snow.

Kikeroga cleared the disaster by only meters, flew meters more before being tossed by the roiling heat and radiation of their _Musai_ being nearly rent in two. The forward bow bent, buckling under the assault of…

“That’s a retrofitted mining laser,” clarified Kikeroga over high-priority communications. "Reverse course, _Prota Musai_. All units execute retreating maneuvers. I’m requesting the Zakorello gate.”

The Zakorello gate opened overhead. This was a mistake, Kikeroga realized. With the ice cloud temporarily cleared, their forces were exposed. The enemy’s cover was gone, but so was their own. And every gundam and other enemy unit could see the vulnerable Zakorello gate.

Something emerged.

Kikeroga shuddered. A _presence_ approached. It seized their helm, pulled them straight up until their shoulder pauldrons squared and their vertebral pillar locked to attention.

Reinforcements?

“ _Prota Musai_ , I said _reverse course_! Get out of range of that laser,” Kikeroga insisted. “All units—”

“Disregard those commands,” said someone over _the Commander’s_ channel.

It was a saw-toothed voice, haughty and acidic. One the humans’d call a _bastard,_ and when they saw who owned it, a _godforsaken bastard_.

And Kikeroga’s troops _obeyed_. They watched it happen from there in space. The frost wasn’t even melted from their armor before power changed hands completely to this new authority.

“ _Prota Musai,_ shift engines to full speed. Remainders of bomber squadrons A through F, commence run on objective.”

“Who is this?” Kikeroga demanded over the channel. Shaking as they watched their ship and the remainder of their units regroup for a fool’s directives. The operation was already more than a failure! Why make it _total?_

Then, they saw _him_.

He slipped through space unlike any shooting star. At a speed Kikeroga had not thought possible. They magnified their view, barely able to lock onto his agility. He was free of Nightingale’s useless bulk and outmaneuvered her easily. He was a shining red, brand-new and already decorated.

Kikeroga’s oil curdled when they realized that for their question, their communications had been muted.

“Kikeroga, hold position. That’s an order.”

And now they could do nothing but watch as this _new model_ took _everything_.

The Cyberians had regrouped as well, become bold in lieu of their stealth tactics. They had no other choice. They moved to intercept the Doga bombers, enraged by the missile barrage that had already struck their once-veiled fortress. The mining laser persisted. The _Prota Musai_ was pushing through it, tearing a sickly streak down its port hull. Gathering speed.

Then this interloper brashly opened a general, all-access channel and spoke as far as the signal would carry. All present would listen. He was a beacon on the battlefield.

“Cyberians! Hear me! I am Commander Sazabi. It is my pleasure to conquer you,” he sneered. “Surrender to the Dark Axis, or be destroyed here and now. Those are your only options. Choose quickly.”

The answer was immediate.

“We’ll fight to our final function! We could never ally with murderers like you!”

“I did not mention alliance,” said _Commander Sazabi_. “Only your _surrender_. But it really doesn’t matter. I’ve already decided what will happen to you.”

The Cyberians, in intercepting the bombers, had been lured into range of what looked like a _dense_ beam assault. But somehow more terrible. It neutralized everything, Dogas and Cyberians both. The few enemy targets that managed to dodge were penned-in by… Kikeroga cursed. Professor Gerbera was giving out funnels like they were a standard upgrade these days.

The _Prota Musai_ reached terminal velocity and slammed into the Cyberian home station. The pathetic defenders could not flee to reach it in time. Nor could they have stopped it, if escape was possible. The warship’s hull cracked the station’s integrity. Vacuum devastated obvious sectors within. If there was any airlock, it was destroyed. The contents of unfortunate human lives vomited forth. Their air, their water, their possessions. Their stony remains, fracturing immediately in the extreme cold. The _Prota Musai_ was a blade of its own broken, superheated carcass and powered on through. Until the laser reached the main engines at last and they exploded in an ion shockwave. Space filled completely. Then emptied. When it was itself again, there was only fine debris left to behold.

The last of the Cyberians cried out in horror.

Sazabi opened some sort of ventral compartment.

Oh, yes.

The reactor within him unleashed his judgement. Kikeroga’s own beam cannons were external and shoulder-mounted, with a disposable battery. Sazabi’s output was the rival of any battleship. Not a single soul made it through. Their internals cooked before they melted in seconds. Soon nothing more than husks, white-hot and then black against the curtain of frozen stars.

It was over. Sazabi was flying in their direction, snarling orders as he went.

“I want to see acquisition teams combing this debris in fifteen seconds,” he said. “Remaining units, form up for inspection.”

“What a fine debut, Commander Sazabi,” Kikeroga attempted to evade failure’s toll. “What perfection.”

He was recharging his particle cannon even though the enemy was far past neutralized.

“Standby to remove the _trash_ ,” Sazabi said.

Commander Sazabi obliterated Commander Kikeroga completely.


	2. The Failure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Dark Axis day! This chapter ties in to other installments in the AU that contains _The Fate of Commander Sazabi_ and LadyShockbox's _Craters_. Another approach to content in both stories, in context of the Dark Axis Commander's ruthless perspective and its incompatibility with living in defeat.

Everything ended in the onslaught of the Light. It pierced him absolutely. There were no more shadows to hide in, no more measures that he could take to forestall it. It revealed him. Stratagem now scattered like vapor in the heat of a sun.

Every advantage had been stripped away, army to arsenal and now down to Commander Sazabi’s own plates of armor.

His last arm taken from him, the kinematics in it strained and finally overloaded from impact. The Gundam’s strikes carried with them too much _force_ in their conviction. They defied metal. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t allowed. But that was the outcome.

“This _isn’t over!”_

The enemy was saying that, when _of course it was_. What else could happen? Commander Sazabi heaved his broken weight and watched that fist come. It knocked him clean into the air, all 300 kilos of him. He had killed hundreds of Gundams, directly and indirectly. This one was unlike, beyond all others.

This one would finally punish him.

The one in the Light struck him irresistibly, blew open his heavy chestplate. His soul drive was exposed, he was helpless and naked. The rings around it spun wildly. Interior, raging against the Gundam’s presence. It burned something that had deadened long, long ago.

The Gundam recoiled in disbelief. “What’s _that?!”_

As if it could not believe that they were beings of the same order.

Sazabi experienced an error. A long-disused function in his mind began to run. It was dutiful to analyze the Fear that gripped him. The Gundam was within seconds of killing him. Even if somehow he managed to avoid this, he would be punished and disposed of by the General. There were no more moves, he loathed to admit, that were favorable to him.

But he did not want to accept death.

There was _something_ to live for.

What?

He was shaking, spat out like acid, “You look _surprised_ , Captain.”

“ _You_ have a _Soul Drive?”_

Obviously this _thing_ meant something to the Gundam. _That_ , he could work with.

“You see, _Captain Gundam_ , you and I are not so different after all…”

Weren’t they? This Gundam battered him with an aura of confusion, desperate questions. Sazabi tried to reciprocate. Tried to take hold of this sphere within him, force his will through it. Anything that would get the Gundam to listen to him for only a few seconds, just a few more seconds alive.

“We share a bond that goes beyond all _physical_ dimensions…”

The Gundam hesitated. Good. Let them make a _mistake_ , Sazabi frantically thought, and tried to ignore how desperate his tactic was. How unlikely it was to work, and how feeble his expression through the Soul Drive turned out to be.

“A bond that could become _even stronger_ , if you _would just say the word…”_

The thing was furious. Though even so berserk with sickly energy, Sazabi was… faint within. Barely a spasm.

It was an unconvincing, thin pact he was trying to make, and the Gundam knew it too. His doubt itself was angry.“What are you talking about, Commander?”  

Sazabi conceded he would never accept such a deal himself. But he did his best to supplicate, however against his nature. However ill-advised.

“Come with us,” Sazabi invited. “Join the Dark Axis, and I will grant you dominion over this world and more!”

Sazabi did not know how to beg. But here he was in his total vulnerability. His optic lit beckoning, promising, admiring. Trying to flatter. If the Gundam took his bargain, there was still a chance to move him to the Dark Axis fortress. He did not know what awaited him there. Gerbera might accept one sacrifice. Especially if it had a _Soul Drive._

“What do you say, Captain? You _know_ you want to.”

Say it, and confuse the enemy into believing it. But the Gundam looked afraid. Then disgusted. Then determined, seething more brightly than even before. It was crushing, a cruelty of the Light. Sazabi flinched. He had failed. The Gundam pulled back to destroy him and Sazabi _felt_ a tiny, long-cold ember within sputter.

“If it’s a _friend_ you want,” accused Captain Gundam.

Accused?

Was he… supposed to follow that up with something else?

If… then…?

?

Captain Gundam faced him not with his clenched fist, but an open palm. He plucked Sazabi’s glass heart out.

-o-

Where

Sazabi was so vague. Wherever he was, he couldn’t remember. Couldn’t think, or _be._ It was too crowded with the _Nothing._ It overwhelmed and surrounded, ordinary as an atmosphere.

Could Nothing suffocate

Was it Something

Why

It had always been this way. It was the truth. It was living, if he was alive. It was reality. There was his purpose. He didn’t exist. His identity and body were a shell, a pretend-guise to execute a _function_. Without them, he vanished.

Didn’t he

-o-

Sazabi had never completely rebooted before. His autonomous processes had kept vital systems running, restarted his awareness safely. The electric ache in many of his parts told a longer story. Especially combined with boot diagnostics.

He was not dead. Explicitly so. In fact, most everything that had brought him closer to death had been repaired to acceptable, but not sufficient standard. He had use and full motor control of both arms. They’d smoothed most of the dents and patched fractures in his armor. They'd restored some small amount of modesty battle had beaten off his frame. His chestplate was whole.

Sazabi opened it immediately, circuit load jolting. He could remember, almost, shattering glass, an echoing _wail_ that was his own—

His Soul Drive was whole. Completely undamaged, an opaque and roiling black. The rings around it were already slowing, his panic cooling.

Then he looked around. An utterly blank, reinforced room. Lit from an obvious projection system. Solitary confinement? The floor rose in the middle to make a sort of platform. The edges were rounded. On that surface sat an earthen container, installed with a single _plant_.

He backhanded it with such force that the container shattered into pieces, scattering filth all over the opposite wall. Then he knew what must have happened.

Sazabi screamed. Cast himself at the walls, denting them until he could confront the truth. Escape was worthless. He had nowhere to go. The Dark Axis logged only lost resources, never _prisoners_ of war. Disappointments to the General were _destroyed_.

He knew what to do. It was not only programmed into him, but the obvious and final strategic move. His body itself was designed to facilitate this tactical maneuver. Should a weapon or technology of sufficient importance belonging to the Dark Axis fall into enemy hands, it would have to be neutralized. To prevent the enemy from using it against the Dark Axis. Should a weapon or technology of sufficient importance belonging to the Dark Axis be unable to be recovered, it should cease to function for it would no longer serve the General’s needs.

Should the unlikely case occur, if Sazabi was to be killed by the enemy, the power nodes in his armor were rigged to overload. Depending on his remaining charge the explosion could take out concrete in a twenty-meter radius. Solid steel at ten. It could melt gundanium at three.

The fragile sphere was so small to his grasp. With just a little force he could crush it where it was installed and without that _control device_ he would cease functioning. He would carry out the General Zeong’s will.

Sazabi shook. His limbs would not move. It was the objectively correct decision, to defend the Dark Axis’ interests. To minimize loss.

He did not want to die.

It made no sense.

He had to _live_ , to _prevail_ , and _win_.

But loss was absolute. When the enemy lost, they perished. When he lost, therefore, he should perish.

It made no sense that he was _afraid_ to die now. What was there left?

He sealed that Soul Drive in himself, armored it against assault once more.

“I see that you are awake, Commander,” said a sickeningly bright voice from over an intercom. “Allow me to welcome you formally to Neotopia, our happy community where humans and robots coexist in harmony.”

“Kill me now,” Sazabi snarled, and meant it, because he _could not do it_.

-o-

They did it. Their form of it. Sazabi was aware that certain beings with a _metaphysical_ take on their meaningless lives would fantasize about continued consciousness after-death. Especially the humans, for they knew they could not transcend their short and biological existence. He had reviewed enough surrender footage to know they invoked various versions of an afterlife. One was a Paradise, a _utopia,_ where they imagined they’d never suffer again. It was a tiresome concept, the small effort of a small mind to negate loss.

He’d also been told to ‘go to Hell.’

This experience, Sazabi interpreted as the opposite. They called it many different things: Hell, Inferno, Tartarus, The Void, Diyu, Gehenna, Oblivion, and Jahannam. Just as they called their Paradise many different things, imagined it in both physicality and as some sort of metaphorical process. But it was where humans imagined they’d place their enemies they were too weak to resist: a never-ending setting of torture. In it, supposedly there were any number of ‘demons’ or equivalent beings that took pleasure in punishing whoever was imagined to end up there for eternity. Sometimes there was only a deity, or series of deities— ones that the humans would proclaim to be kind in the same dying breath. Sometimes there was nothing but oneself and the ‘demon’ was self-contained and automatic.

Hell was the kind of thing a human would imagine. They wanted more than anything to have the power of the ‘demon’ to subjugate their enemy, to reverse the outcome of their wars. Sazabi was often disgusted with their unwillingness to accept defeat. They all held illusions of somehow disputing his superiority. It was the same as their utopia: a way to win when they had _lost_.

But Sazabi understood now. They had killed him, defeated him.

This was Hell.

They had sent him to Hell.

He was in it.

There was ‘tomato sauce’ and he had to stir it.

After stirring it at a certain speed and spreading it around the kitchen, he had been asked to _do it again_. With the implicit “do it _competently”_ unsaid but definitely there. Sazabi vented angrily, having snapped one wooden spoon and bent two plastic ones.

The demons here mocked him by changing the nature of the campaign constantly. First, it had been the demand to participate in these ‘chores’ or not at all. They couldn’t physically move him to do so, but they did not need to. To him, he could win by refusing their commands, and he would lose if he obeyed them. But that woman then turned it around on him. Noncompliance meant _he failed_ her _task_ by default and was therefore inferior.

So the only way to prevail in his scenario was to deny her commands. And the only way to prevail in her scenario was to follow her commands.

A human’s commands. Sazabi’s coolant pumps shuddered. It placed ‘Ms. Ray’ as his _superior_.

And it did not stop there. Sazabi pushed the wretched spoon around the boiling food substance.

The next battle was over following commands to the humans’ satisfaction. Their directions were often vague enough to interpret any way he liked. It had been Sazabi’s initial intent that if they’d have him _obey_ , they’d find their lives immeasurably more difficult. He’d resist them at every turn and soon they would give up and turn on him. But that didn’t accomplish anything he’d intended. They’d scorn him and imply he couldn’t _help_ being a failure. Unless he cleaned up his mess, of course. And did the task correctly.

And that left only his obedience in the end, regardless of what path of action he chose. They were demons and would punish him whatever he did, for as long as they desired. Whether he was alive or dead did not matter; his life was over, and now he was in Hell.

Sazabi’s optic slid to the side. The human warden was using a knife to chop onions. She had forbidden him from chores using one of these tools— they not acknowledged that it was a _weapon_ , that _anything_ could be a weapon if one intended it to be— and instead did it herself. The chemicals released were sure to distract her and impair her vision, though she did not use any sort of protective gear. Humans had no sense of self-preservation.

Letting him near their vital fuel.

He let go of the spoon, let it lean against the bottom of the pot. Only just to the right was their water source, and below that, where they kept refined chemicals. The humans had made him remove and organize these earlier in the day, their foolish mistake. He knew exactly what was in inventory.

They kept sodium hydroxide so close by. While some of the weak acidity of this ‘tomato sauce’ would neutralize a portion, a fatal dose was easily achievable. And best of all, their food substance was already hot and they would not notice it boil further.

He had been able to bend down silently, open the cabinet well enough. He had even taken hold of the hard-plastic bottle in a desperately metered grip. But it was sealed with some sort of cap, one he was unwilling to screw off. His patience strained, he decided to just _rip_ it off so he could finally _destroy_ these humans who thought to subjugate him.

The plastic tore. The resulting splash missed the stove entirely and splattered. Sazabi yelled loudly. His limbs wouldn’t move. He was stuck and the _humans_ would see him and his _failure_ , he hated, he _hated_ this!

He hated Hell!

He hated how this demon acted when he resisted. For a moment he wondered if he had actually won in a sense. Her instant of fear was so clear to him, undeniable. Then he had no doubts as she put down the knife and moved her hands onto her hips.

“Sazabi, I’m disappointed in you,” she said decisively. With that _look_. She was firing at him, in her own way. The shots scattered on his armor. They were nothing to him, and he said nothing to her.

To make matters worse, her bondmate appeared and instantly understood his intent and actions. He didn’t say anything coherent for a moment. His placid demeanor cracked. He vibrated, pointed to him, pointed to the sodium hydroxide bottle, pointed to the floor, then opened his mouth, “Holy shit!”

“Not around Nana,” Ms. Ray said. The maggot was squirming in her special seat off to the side. Far enough out of the path of the chemical, obviously. The male human moved her anyway.

“Keiko, he just tried to _poison_ us!”

“Dissolve,” Sazabi corrected.

“Excuse me, what?”

“It would hydrolyze your proteins,” Sazabi said. “Or better, react with your stomach acids and burn you from the inside-out.”

“That’s enough, Sazabi,” Ms. Ray said. “Mark, put that phone down. He knows he’s asking for trouble.”

Mark was already dialing. He whimpered pitifully, then clenched his irksome lips. Maybe he should have screamed. It would have made Sazabi feel better.

Then Ms. Ray put on an oven mitt and took the bottle from Sazabi’s grasp. She poured it down the kitchen drain.

“But _honey_ , he… the SDG needs to...”

“I’m not going to let him have his way,” said Ms. Ray. She took off the oven mitt and stirred the tomato sauce, which was burning. “If he’d done it, then I’m sure the SDG would come and take him away then, too. It’s just what he wants.”

Sazabi thought to argue. But he didn’t know what to say. If he had succeeded, then he would have surely been killed. And it would certainly be more convenient if Neotopia killed him. He could attempt to self-terminate by forcing their hand, if he couldn’t do so directly.

Why didn’t that feel like a solution?

“If… if you’re sure. How about I help you with dinner instead tonight?”

His warden kissed her bondmate’s cheek. Sazabi winced. “Thanks. Especially now that Sazabi has to clean up his mess before it stains the tiles.”

The humans had made up the concept of Hell but not how to escape.

-o-

Sazabi tried anyway. There was a window during the planetary night when his warden and her bondmate were asleep.

When he first discovered they went dormant for several hours at a time, he had tried to enter their room and eliminate them. They were vulnerable. He hadn’t made it any farther than halfway down the hall. When they found him in the morning, he wouldn’t tell them anything. Their reaction to his first attempt to kill them had not been constructive. They were eager to believe that any one of his thoughts was violent enough to stop him on the spot. So did not guess at his intent.

The male had an irritating habit of rising early or retiring late.  Sazabi was sure to bide his time until their facility was silent. They roused sometimes, and each time Sazabi had to wait until they became completely unconscious again. But after six local ‘hours’ the opportunity came at last. He could discern through the flimsy walls of this structure that they were both in their useless bedding. Their vitals were subdued. Heart rates lowered. Respiration slowed. They were… honestly, Sazabi didn’t really care. Whatever humans did instead of recharge and defrag while sleeping. What mattered was that the risk of waking was low for both of them.

Among the humiliating order of new _challenges_ Sazabi had discovered: maneuvering in this human dwelling efficiently. This time, without knocking any of their clutter to the floor. The final obstacle was the back door. It was unlocked.

Didn't this complex have  _security?_ They were keeping him _in_. Sazabi actually walked straight out the door, down the road, and away from his detention.

He hated walking. There were much faster means of locomotion.

This was stupid. They likely were tracking his position. And even if he was to escape, where was he supposed to go. What was his next move? He knew these truths and scathed himself from within over it. But what else was there? To stay in that place, unresisting? Where he’d already grown tired of their mockery? Eliminating it by eliminating them would only result in failure. This was one avenue of… not success. But he had not yet tried it and _had_ to make an attempt.

He was running _scared_. Like a _coward_. What an idiot. What a weak fool, who did not have the information to make a tactical retreat. They’d removed him to this site for a reason. It was outside the city he’d surveyed in detail. He was unwilling to trample through the _greenery_. He would be easy to follow overland, with his heavy frame leaving deep footsteps and crushed foliage. Even a human without any relevant sensors could go after him. Second: all that _nature_ that would be touching him. He’d had enough of _dirt_ from ‘weeding’ a few days previous.

But what was he supposed to do, following the roads? Where was that supposed to get him?

Their terrestrial vehicles beeped at him, what few of them were running at this hour.

He knew this feeling. From his formative programming, a strategically hopeless situation. The enemy had reached an optimal configuration— in a game, in a campaign of war, in their power over him. He could only struggle as they made each perfect move.

No matter how far he walked, he could not forfeit his fate and start over. And he could not lose in full until they delivered the killing blow. But he had lost all the same. There was nothing he could do now.

Sazabi was not running for any rational reason. Running did not bring him closer to victory. It did not even avoid defeat. He had lost control. A fear beyond Fear, not of a death it could see but a blank future his mind had no business navigating. It was beyond his comprehension.

The familiar night was fading around him and he was tumbling into the unknown.

Beep!

“Silence!” he yelled after the car. He was trying to have a crisis!

Beep! An extremely ugly bright yellow thing sped past, but not as fast as Sazabi’s reflexes. His kinematics staggered, his instant force to push it aside and _silence_ the operator negated. His struts rattled. He couldn’t move. _Zeong’s great rusty damned and forsaken slag-hole_ he _couldn’t fragging MOVE!_

**“ARGH!”**

His scream startled several flocks of birds that had been sleeping in a nearby tree. Accustomed to _beeping_ but not to him, apparently. Then, seeing no movement a few of the horrible creatures almost landed on _him_.

“Oh, NO! Absolutely _not!”_

He roared his engine and they fled.

More cars passed him. Morning had come, the diurnal humans had risen. A law enforcement officer arrived to direct traffic to another roadway. If it was a mercy or practicality, Sazabi didn’t care. He couldn’t bear more of _them_ looking at him.

A red car pulled up right alongside him, then parked in front of him. Their police had let it through. His warden stepped out of it, with a communication device in one hand, speaking loudly over the nearby drone of nearby traffic.

“No, no, it’s all right. I have it under control. I’d prefer it if you didn’t. I don’t want him to think he’s being taken back to the base when I’m taking him home now. Yes, I’ll call a truck. It’s fine. I’ll let you know. Thanks, thanks so much.”

Then she dialed another number.

“Hello? Al? Yes, it’s Keiko Ray. I’ve got a little problem on A-20, could you please run by? Mm, no, it’s not so bad, but it looks a little shocking. You’ll know when you see it. Yes. M-hm. Thanks again.”

Then she cut her communications line and crossed her flimsy arms over her chest. She tapped her foot, waiting.

“Well?” Sazabi snarled. “Aren’t you going to unlock me?”

“When we get home,” Ms. Ray said. She clearly meant her home. She would not survive an instant in Sazabi’s ‘home.’

That concept felt incorrect. It didn’t fit into his memory smoothly. The Dark Axis didn’t have a ‘home’ world. It had worlds it had conquered, and it had the core infrastructure of its main fortress. There _was_ a world that much of the elements that composed the Axian legions originated from. But there was no point going there. It had been completely stripped. Possibly ancient production facilities remained, abandoned. The Dark Axis _was_ the ‘home’ of every unit contained within. Not that such sentimentality was important, anyway.

“You know, my son never tried to run away,” Ms. Ray said. Then she frowned and tried to explain herself further. “Maybe you can’t understand. Even if you’re a good parent, I don’t know. It’s just something even happy kids will try to do.”

She was _talking_ to him. She knew that she had a captive audience. It would be better if he shut his auditory receptors off. It would annoy him less. But part of Sazabi wanted her to anger him, to distract from the situation.

“Shute’s  not always thrilled about having to do his chores. But he’s never been so unhappy he tried to leave,” said Ms. Ray. “I wonder what that says about you.”

A truck approached past the police barrier. A GM stepped out of the passenger side, looked at Sazabi, looked at the truck, and then placed his hands on his helm like he’d been presented with a chemical fire.

“It’s okay. He can’t move,” the woman explained to them. “Could you hoist him up on my car? I really need to get him home. He has a busy day ahead of him.”

“I need a second. Commander ‘friggin Sazabi, what a day. It’s not even eight yet,” said the GM. “Al, back it up. Are you sure we don’t just haul him back for you?”

“I’m sure,” said Ms. Ray. “I need to do it, so he’ll understand.”

“Teach him good, ma’am. Won’t even scratch your paint,” said the truck, who was Al. A vague realization came to Sazabi, that the Neotopian robots were more fluid with their physical frames than most mecha were. It was highly unlikely that “Al” was a truck all of the time.

Did he lose his purpose when he was something else?

They lifted Sazabi on top of the tortured red car and tied him down with bungee cables. Sazabi did not say a word, but his optic flared volcanically. Soon his warden was up the road, back the way he’d came. Sazabi watched the sky go by as the world moved around him. What a thing to be  _petrified_.

Fear flared again that he was going back to that place. To his warden’s ‘home.’

-o-

His warden had demanded to know why he’d fled. He said to her that it was pointless to stay in a situation where every outcome was defeat. She told him not to be so dramatic about scrubbing the siding.

She said that he was weak and cowardly to run from such trivial tasks. But she said it in a strange way. With only two words.

She said to him, “Be brave.”

He demanded her explain.

It took her a long time to think how.

“Even when things look hopeless, we can’t give up. When we are surrounded by darkness, we need bravery to do what’s right. Captain Gundam was brave. My son is brave. All of us do our best every day to make sense of a world that’s different now.”

Then she shoved a flimsy tool into his hands and told him, “You, mister, just have to worry about raking leaves out of the sump.”

Sazabi grudgingly did so. Night fell and his processor ached. It was too clear to him that he’d skipped a defrag cycle. He’d been able to do so in a more controlled environment without consequences. Sometimes he was active for an entire campaign. But there was too much excess stimuli to filter, too much activity on his cognition circuits.

In his regular, featureless simulation, there was an anomaly.

“Be brave.”

He’d forget what was said. He’d deleted any virtue of courage in himself centuries ago.

“Be brave.”

What if it _was_ vital, but he’d poorly implemented it? Removed it rather than perfecting it?

“Be brave.”

That space had been filled by combat and strategic functions. But he _needed_ it now.

“Be brave.”

Captain Gundam had used it to win.

“Be brave.”

A sickly presence flickered within him.

-o-

There was a large mirror in his warden’s bedroom. He discovered it when she let him slip away for once. She’d run out of punishment for him and had to contrive more. Sazabi was searching her room for anything of value she would hide in her private quarters. Permanent key to his security bolt. Power grid access. Anything potentially to hold hostage.

He was scanning the room when he saw a mech in it. Himself! The humans extruded filth and their exteriors could become _more_ than dusty even at rest, so it was obvious _why_ they had a mirror. For all the good it did them! No amount of grooming could fix the problem of _hide_ and _hair_.

Sazabi tilted his head. His reflection mimicked him. In his life, there was no need to observe his appearance. It served its purpose as proof of his rank: the terror of his facade that could cow the enemy and bow all subordinates to his will. And so in that sense, he was vain. But he was so rarely face-to-face with any enemy save in final operations. And there was nothing to present to Gerbera. Even by ranking officers or external powers he was hardly seen, and he’d been given subordinates and a Color Guard proxy to act in his will.

Sazabi looked awful!

And not in the ‘awe-inspiring’ way, or even the ‘extremely very bad and threatening’ way, both of which were ways he preferred. He looked ‘bad’ in the ‘entirely undesirable’ way. He could have been all right with looking ‘bad’ in the sense of looking appropriately evil.

He didn’t even look that. All ornament was missing. Most of his battle armor was gone, leaving only what protected his privacy and integrity. He was different without it. He looked relatively absurd.

No wonder his warden would take him seriously only when he threatened her life. He was still much stronger, larger than her. That was all he had left.

Still, he probably was more handsome than Gerbera would be, with half his components missing and all his decals ripped off. Short and covered completely in an exoshell as he was.

(Anyone capable of engineering such an attractive mech as Sazabi ought have done a little better job on themself.)

The detail on his own helm though, was sore to miss. Without them he sort of looked lost. There was nothing much to frame his optic in its wide black setting. He really wanted his hat back.

Was that an unreasonable demand?  His hat?

He detected movement in the hall outside. _They_ knew he was in here. He listened to the humans as they pretended to be passing by. They’d been watching.

“He was checking himself out,”

“Think we should give him his own?”

“Nah. He’d probably see himself and attack it or something.”

Sazabi’s reflection stared back at him. It tilted its head in the other direction, just as he did. This was him. This is what they saw when they looked at him. The _former_ Commander.

-o-

Sazabi was not pleased to be downstairs. He never was. But his warden had decided that it was important for him to be present during the day. She was preventing him from completing her tasks and then retreating. Then he had to be goaded again out of the room they allotted him, or out of the garage, or somewhere similar. By insisting he remain in proximity she reduced the energy she had to expend in handling him.

It increased the energy Sazabi spent enduring her presence.

But it increased the opportunity for him to catch her inevitable mistakes.

She was gathering her materials to ‘grade papers’ in the kitchen. Her daughter, having just been ‘fed’ (it seemed to persist on a liquid fuel supplemented by solids) sat still in her chair. But the woman had forgotten something she needed, and turned her back into the other room to retrieve it.

Sazabi pulled a blade out of the knife block. It scanned as a weapon to him. A few thousand functions in his mind engaged. He was immediately hyperaware of its cutting radius, its utility. Rudimentary, but better than nothing.

He looked up from what was in his hand and immediately saw the human spawn less than a meter away. It was staring at him in a way that if it wasn’t sub-intelligent might have been fascinated. When it wasn’t babbling or screaming the few words it knew at random it was unsettlingly quiet.

Sazabi automatically knew what he could do. At that instant, it was so clear to him that this nauseating creature had no defenses. He could cleave into its flesh with ease. The knife would go right through its soft, barely-formed internal structure. It would be beyond simple to separate the head from the body. He knew what fluids would spill from the remains, how the chemical analysis would smell to him in the air. The spatter trajectory.

Of course he locked up at once. He’d locked up over anything even a fraction so vivid.

Why was this a simulation of _Fear_ , though? He could not move, the knife and that maggot remained dead ahead in his vision. He wasn’t simulating a desire. Not in any way. It was like the warnings that prevented him from standing at a sheer ledge without precaution. He knew what could happen if he fell from a great height.

Or more precisely, it was like simulating a scenario with only an unsuccessful outcome. The dead-end paths that did not lead to any possible victory. He was averse to them, even dwelling within one. It didn’t occur to him that there was still some form of failure he’d yet to achieve.

This was corrosive knowledge. If his worthlessness, or his defeat was somehow not yet absolute. That his knowledge of what he had, how his assets were configured on the field, was not perfect. That he could lose more, or fail again on some level he hadn’t previously been able to comprehend.

His consciousness lurched.

His warden’s bondmate entered the room and immediately turned around. Presumably to call the authorities. Sazabi’s fear metamorphosed into the ordinary variety once more. If there was a reason to kill him, there. This was it. The larval human was oblivious. It even laughed at him. What an annoying sound.

“Sazabi? What are you doing?”

His warden took the knife out of his hand. When Sazabi saw her face, he was puzzled to _understand_ it. It _was Fear,_ that was obvious and something he knew well and would have reveled in. But if she Feared him, she was willing to touch him despite that. She was afraid of what he was going to do far more. Even if he’d been mobile, she would have risked her life to interfere.

Sazabi knew instantly she had simulated the exact same thing as he had.

“You keep live blades in easy reach,” was all he said.

“Sazabi, you know you aren’t allowed to have a knife. I didn’t want to hide them, but you might give me no choice but to.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t you get any ideas. You’re lucky you didn’t frighten Nana,” she scolded. “What were you thinking?”

Sazabi strained his rigid joints. “Isn't it obvious?”

She reached around his helm and unlocked the brace on his body. But not before taking her spawn out of its chair and out of arm's reach.

He’d hoped to terrorize her, get maybe _anything_ out of this fiasco that didn’t result in this... ugly, nauseous awareness. But he’d made the wrong move, he knew that right away when her Fear didn’t mean he was winning. He was losing. He’d lost and instead of being destroyed had been put into a new game with the knowledge of the loser. Now he was making the same losing moves over again. It was the exact same game. He’d threatened her child with a weapon. She ran to interfere, presumably the authorities would arrive...

The male human in the doorway hastily hid a weapon in his fabric clothing before his superior and ‘wife’ could turn around. But Sazabi knew, and said nothing, and expected nothing less from him. That was what happened before, after all. It did not gratify Sazabi as much as it should have to learn there was a firearm in this house.

“Sazabi, please go to your room. Wait there while I decide what to do about this.”

He ought to have tried to obtain it, as he’d obtained the knife.

But this entire time, he had been more than capable of murdering that larval human with his bare hands. Yet, he hadn’t thought about it until he held a weapon.

-o-

Her retribution was swift and creative. She goaded him back into the kitchen and then _gave_ him the knife. He locked up almost at once.

Then when he was able to move again, she bet him that he could not mince onions. It was an extremely transparent taunt. But it was one Sazabi rose to anyway. After a comprehensive explanation of onions, mincing, et cetera.

And at first, he couldn’t do it. She was asking him to cut something with a weapon. Ripping weeds out of the ground, the damned bolt would tolerate. But attacking even a _plant_ with a blade set it off. Ms. Ray stood by and had to press that button several times. But in a few hours, curses, and standoffs, Sazabi managed to dismember all of the onions in front of him. Poorly. His fine motor skills were calibrated to saber fighting and to ripping apart an enemy. Not to this sort of drudgery better accomplished by an automatic processing unit.

He was not attacking the wretched onion. He was reconfiguring the onion.

Yes.

He thought of ‘reconfiguring’ his warden. Experimentally. Then he was immobile and also still smelled of onion.

-o-

Keiko was incredibly ironic at times. Talking about constructs like 'justice.' She’d do so to a crowd that had come to her residence seeking exactly that. And they’d forgotten their own, and replaced it with hers. She somehow had made hers more real to them by speaking its name.

But in the practical, rather than ideological sense? Without such illusions as ‘justice,’ Neotopia had come to her doorstep seeking to remove him. A minimal transaction. One life for however-many they would avenge.

But Keiko would not let them be so sensible. She insisted that this non-win-non-loss existence was the _real_ way for him to lose. Non-loss as total loss. Ridiculous.

Or it would have been, if the knowledge that it would have been _better_ for the Dark Axis if he died hadn’t been souring his mind for weeks.

In the darkness of the room they kept him in, he tried to reflect on the events of that day. After the mob had dispersed, Keiko had assigned him to organizing her hopeless storage in the basement. He had labored for hours and still the task was nowhere near complete. Probably because she had chided him with, “be careful!”

(As if she’d prove him _careless_!)

Still. She had proven to be _somehow_ a figure of ad-hoc authority in this world. The crowd had dispersed and her will was done. Therefore she had faced them with some sort of tactical intent, however rough. Her reasoning, primitive as it was, was not limited to the one metric of, “what will punish?”

No, if she wanted to punish him, she would have let the mob exact their ‘justice.' Instead she argued for _lighter_ penalty, while pretending it was a greater, more encompassing one. Deceiving them.

Then she placed him in the basement for the rest of the day. Why would an enemy strategist do that? It wasn’t random. She’d never suggested he go down there before. It was a poor fit for his size. She assigned him drudgery before, but would not ask him do several genres of tasks: related to septic human functions or waste disposal, possible use of anything interpretable as a weapon (unless supervised), and logistically difficult tasks. Many of the last kind  would result in large amounts of broken or ruined items. Such as washing the ‘dishes.’ Though Keiko seemed to think he’d improve on that one.

He analyzed the basement.

The basement had no windows.

-o-

He analyzed the choice to avoid all windows in this context.

No sniper could reach him. Despite that Neotopians had few to none among them.

-o-

He analyzed the choice to keep him out of gunsights. It was accompanied by the first of what would become successively more frequent chest pains.

Keiko Ray was defending his life, as he would defend a vital resource should it remain priority. That was the only conclusion.

-o-

How did one feel about that?

(The way she had said it, that it was a matter of ‘caring.’ It was another one of those armor-piercing rounds.)

Sazabi did not care. Not about anyone. And he realized, he ought not to have cared about himself. His function placed him as an important unit, allowed him to _Fear._ But his responsibility to defend his own existence was for the benefit of the Dark Axis.

And it was _his_ responsibility. No one else’s. That was why he had been given such advanced capabilities. Not even another Commander would deviate from their strategy to shield him from failure. He would not be expected to do so for them.

Even among ranks of those sworn to the same task as himself, there was the enemy. Beings that stood in his way if they were unwise and would destroy him if necessary for their own success. It was kill or be killed. In this world, there were only opponents. Below them, slaves.

Nothing else.

-o-

But he was not Keiko’s opponent. Despite her conviction to never let him have his way, she was not thwarting a strategy of his. And when he was utterly trapped in endgame, she did not move to finish him.

And slaves were simple to sacrifice. That was their purpose. Keiko would not relinquish him to achieve victory.

-o-

Morning always came. This was because the humans were fragile beings that preferred a specific radiation band.  Even when they did not orbit a star, they simulated a morning with certain light and energy spectrums.

Aside from conserving his dwindling battery, Sazabi learned quickly to mimic human sleep patterns. There was nothing to do during their 'night' despite that it was much more pleasant than the glaring 'day.' He could read as many books were in the house. But why?

Sazabi was not sure if his volatile memory allocation schemes were due to this overfrequency of sleep and defrag cycles. He’d rarely retired so exhausted before. Every time. Every day. As bleak boredom diminished as a problem, fatigue grew. Wherever his newfound impulse to take _interest_ came from, it was running him into the ground.

Managing hundreds of factors in war was simple for him. Forcing simple tasks, social interactions, trivial labor through his processor, these were not. He wasn’t meant for anything they asked of him. It was reasonable therefore to sleep as long, and as often as he could. Just to process and recover from processing what _can’t_ have been as complex as his major function.

But the sun still came up over the horizon. It was now  'summer.' Whatever that meant.

Sazabi glared after Keiko’s bondmate. He'd leaned over one side of the raised patio to look at him, laughed, turned around and ran inside the house. Presumably to ask Keiko why he had been allowed to use the “lawnmower.”

A reasonable question. It did have several spinning blades on the bottom of it. But they were for the grass. So Sazabi did not regret their use at all. He wasn’t exactly delighted to do any chore, but he had been asked to wound the grass. To dismember it such that it was only a certain length. For vain, aesthetic purposes.

(Neotopian grass did not grow very quickly, and that Keiko herself was no woman for 'lawn culture.' But every few months, the grass around their abode needed a single mow.)

Sazabi glared after the human. He knew very well that he looked ridiculous. He didn’t need this! What was the point nagging him into these chores, and then mocking him anyway? They should have expected this. At least this task was solitary and somewhat contemplative. There was an efficient route to traverse the grassy area and leave no uneven patches. Even if it was insulting to be given a task best suited for something with barely anything more than a pathing algorithm.

The sun beat down on him. Its method of beating was pointless, of course. But altogether alien. Sazabi adjusted his optical sensitivity. Again. Then paused. In the instant his vision had been overexposed, he’d overshot his predicted path. It would take about 5 more seconds to ‘mow’ the grass than expected.

That was enough for Sazabi. He wanted the sun _dead._

And that was enough for the safety lock. He seized up. The mower kept going, and then stopped when he wasn’t there to hold the operation switch down.

It would take an unforeseen amount more time to ‘mow’ the grass. Sazabi _yelled_.

He heard footsteps at the top of the patio stairs. Then they stopped. The humans were conversing.

“He looks alright to me, honey.”

“Goodness, what could he be upset about _now?_ ”

“It was your idea to have another son.”

“Ssh, you! Just let him be.”

They weren’t coming to get him. He was going to have to sit here. They had the power to make him wait as long as they wanted.

The worthless, blasted star was at its apex in the sky. Sazabi endured its maximum radiation, heating the surface of his armor. He was reminded of flight. Of space. Of those few times he had known a star's light over him unimpeded by atmosphere. He could have been misremembering. None of these memories were as vivid as the sun.

It was conducting deeper into him. Nowhere near hot enough to engage his cooling systems. But substantial, somehow. Warm, in another way. Almost satisfying.

“Hello? You okay, Sazabi?”

His awareness skipped. Distracting, wretched sun. Lulling him into deprioritizing his sensors. “I’d be better if you unlocked me!”

“Oh, simmer down. It’s only been a few minutes,” Keiko said. She was wearing a “sun-dress”, some variation of human garment. It did not look to protect well from the sun. Then again, if humans were sensible they would armor their vulnerable bodies until there was no use for flesh and they would stop needing to have any.

“ _Unnecessary_ minutes.”

The human put her hands on her hips in a way that pathetically attempted to invoke _authority._ “So what’s the problem, huh? Cutting the grass made you mad?”

Sazabi grumbled.

“Turn the sun off,” he said.

Then regretted it, because that was a  _ridiculous thing to say._ Those words had just _come out_ , glitched out of his vocalizer like a couple of shells rolling off the side of a warship. They hit Keiko. She snorted. Then tried to hide her face in her hands. Then burst out in convulsions of ‘laughter’ that were so strong she _dared_ to lean on his frame for support.

“Get off! Stop laughing at me!”

Keiko pulled away apologetically, but the warmth of her hand lingered. “Ha… no, it’s… that’s… that’s funny. You of all people.”

“I’m not joking,” Sazabi said.

“That’s what made it funny,” said Keiko, who was contradictory and confusing as ever. About the rice balls, about her daughter, about ‘homework.’ About hating him. About liking him.

She pressed the switch that gave him free movement back. “So glad to have pleased you,” he muttered.

-o-

She told him to try, next time, not to fight the sun.

A statement that made no sense. One who did not fight gave in. She wasn’t telling him to submit to the sun. He wouldn’t. But he could not fight the sun. He could not fight anymore at all. He could not fight, thus could not win. But he would not submit and thus could not lose further.

He had not succeeded to kill. The enemy had not killed him.. He was ruled by the enemy. But they were not his ruler. If they were not his ruler, they could not rule him.

Do not fight the sun. Do not submit to the sun.

He did not understand. He could not understand.

-o-

Sazabi was not programmed to be stopped _here_. He would _have_ to understand. To prevail. He would not give up. He would not consent to failure.

Instead, he did what he had been designed to do. Outside the safe, controlled environment of _Stalemate_ as intended.

He grew smarter.

-o-

It was eating his power. Sazabi began shutting off superfluous processes during sleep mode only to find the same amount of memory used every time. The gaping-wide processor ache that suggested he was _versioning_ was not comforting. He wasn’t enacting some kind of emergency efficiency upgrade. His mind chewed up his battery charge even if his most taxing functions were disabled or uninstalled.

He was simulating vividly again. Expensively. Stalemate. The opponent lost. He punished them, because that was how the game worked. They cried out in voices that Sazabi remembered.

-o-

Sazabi hadn’t noticed the stack of metal bowls on the kitchen table until their noise clanged around in his auditory feed. “Idiot,” he muttered, already bending down to pick them up. Doing so meant taking even more care not to trample everything in the kitchen _twice_.

“You’re not.”

Keiko was pulling things out of the dishwasher, or had been until a moment ago.

“What?”

“You say such awful things about yourself,” said the human.

Sazabi put the bowls back on top of the table sharply. “I was referring to _you_ ,” he snapped. “Leaving things lying around this way.”

The look she gave him wasn’t any more potent than usual. He still felt like he’d shot his own hand.

-o-

He had to lie. More and more. But he was not learning to lie better. As he became more adept at navigating this prison, deception became more complicated. Carried more hazards? He risked nothing lying to a hostile warden that expected him to fail and sabotage every task. It facilitated his resistance at a basic level. That he was honest about his hatred and a liar about his threat.

But to defend himself from his environment he had to lie when it did not profit him. He had to say things that were untrue to maintain his position. And he had to deny what he was beginning to identify as possible winning scenarios. They granted advantage to his enemies.

They and he could not both prevail. It was an error of his. To be seeing glimpses of a winning path where the _enemy_ was allowed to win. Their win was his loss. He had to keep lying.

-o-

The world was growing dimmer. He was getting slower. Sazabi rationed his battery charge, trying to stretch out his operational time. He’d find it soon. He’d find where the power came in from.

Keiko caught him trying to move the media console to get at the wiring behind.

“Sazabi? Is there something you need?” she asked, patronizing him. Exposing his weakness, highlighting his utter dependance on her resources.

She asked again with that nauseatingly sincere expression on her fleshy face. “Are you running low?”

“No,” Sazabi lied.

-o-

They had been knocking at Sazabi’s door for nearly a full day now because he had not exited it in that time. He was down to less than 25% charge and he did not want them to notice. He did not have the resources left to perform any sort of proximity scan for a power module or crude electric line. He’d tried to adapt the powered devices in the room, but their voltage was nowhere near enough to make headway. Someone more technically-inclined than he was might have managed it.

Sazabi stayed very still. The world was rapid around him. He’d pushed and pushed himself to process more effectively with fewer and fewer resources, but there was a limit to that. He’d lost focus more than once.

They were beginning to notice.

“Sazabi? Are you awake?”

“Unfortunately,” he finally said. If he waited any longer, they’d likely try to barge in. Better to communicate enough for them to leave him alone.

“Oh! Good. I was hoping you could lend me a hand.”

“Forget it,” Sazabi said.

This was where she was about to taunt him. To blame him for being _lazy_ and _cowardly_ , for _hiding_ from such a small being like her.

“Sazabi, are you all right?” she asked. “Please, I want to help you.”

“Help me? Help! Ha!” Sazabi’s engine sped, lending a furious snarl to his voice. Wasting yet more power. “Keiko, I have _lost._ There is nothing more for me. You prolong an extended _mockery_ of my existence. I will _never_ be ‘all right.’”

Sazabi could measure Keiko’s heartbeat until thermal imaging became an excess drain on him. That sense shut off too.

“Is that… is that how you really feel?”

“I don’t know,” Sazabi snarled. “What do _you_ think, you _worthless bug_?”

Keiko was silent for some time. But she did not move from in front of his door. She did not touch the handle. He could see her shadow under the crack from the lit hallway. “You listen to me, Sazabi,” she demanded. “From where I was standing, your former ‘existence’ wasn’t exactly great. If this mocks it, it serves you right!”

“Silence!”

“So maybe you lost. You didn’t die. But many other people did. And here you are sitting around sorry for yourself when you’re alive and well. Nobody _you killed_ is around to do that.”

He’d made her angry. Truly angry. As far as humans could truly be anything.

“I heard you up on that tower like everybody else, and you were so happy to say that we should be your _slaves_. And you know— I know you do!— that what’s happened to you now isn’t a _fraction_ as bad. But you’re a _sore loser_ who can’t stand up to even a little bit of the threats he makes.”

Sazabi opened his door. He had to stoop under the clearance. Without that barrier between them, her fury was palpable in the air. It almost eclipsed his own. He heated over not with the need to _silence her_ but with the _urge_ to correct this. The unbidden anxiety: had he lost, more deeply, again, _more completely_? What had he _done?_

He hated her. He hated her so much, when she was _right_.

“All right. You want your _slave_? You have him. What’s your wish?” he snarled at her.

She had probably intended to give him a minor task. Her assignments had been trivial lately. But she opened her mouth and ordered him, “It rained yesterday. I want you to scrub the windows. Yes, before you ask. All of them.”

-o-

It rained again that night, too. And the windows, Keiko was insistent to tell him, needed to be washed after _every_ summer rainstorm. Even if two came within the same twenty-four hour period. He’d told her! And he made himself very clear!

“I refuse!”

Keiko was pretending not to comprehend his reason. She knew this was a worthless chore. Next to preparing her nauseating biofuel, especially. They did not need it to survive. It hardly was noticeable in any way. It was a task invented specifically to waste his time.

“Then you’re just going to have to deal with the consequences,” Keiko said. “I’ll have to push back giving you your console privileges.”

“As if I care!” And Sazabi did not care much about that at all. And he did not care much for how this being defied obvious conclusions. “You repulsive mound of organic filth!”

He then raised his hand, meaning to gesture at the kitchen window. there was no _point_  cleaning was when _no dirt could be seen_ from the inside. He sorely misjudged the magnitude of his action and soon a loud crystalline _smash_ split the house. He’d rent the screen entirely and shattered both the security glass and its wooden frame.

Sazabi stared at it. Then, the infant shrieked in the other room as if she was being _murdered._ His logic circuits misfired. Noise, a weapon, firing it, a target, kill confirmation. A white-hot flash of thought. Threat-recognition. Priority modules.

Sazabi identified himself as the hostile. Who had hurt Nana.

As the enemy. As the opponent.

To be destroyed.

He couldn’t process his inability to move. He didn’t want to. He wanted to. To rip apart the door and secure that noxious child, find it undamaged. To never move again.

Keiko had left the room, and now had entered it again. She sighed and shook her head, then wordlessly noticed his lockdown state. She freed him without questions, and he tested his hands and grip without comment.

Keiko still expected her assignment.

“All the windows?” he asked, hardly recognizing his own voice.

He turned away further from Keiko, made to leave. He lingered. She could not push past him in the doorway to see his face that he did not want her to see.

“Just the ones around the front of the house for now,” Keiko said. “You can do the rest tomorrow. How’s that sound?”

He didn’t care about that. “And your offspring?”

“She’s fine,” Keiko confirmed, puzzled.

That was enough. Sazabi rarely retreated. But he put distance between him and the situation. Hazard control.

-o-

With his power dwindling, it became necessary to change his strategy. The outlook was a mere two planetary ‘weeks’ if Sazabi continued on his current course of action. However, by adjusting his behavior, he predicted a rough month of continued operation. By then, surely, he would have found the power center.

He altered his resistance. If these humans could not be fought to a standstill, they could be controlled. They would maneuver in predictable patterns and eventually he could cause them to take any one that he wished. At the moment, Sazabi wished them to not expend his reserves of energy.

Which meant he had to get Keiko to assign him fewer physical tasks, or fewer tasks in general. Preferably both. He would then be able to focus on  energy conservation. He would reserve his activities for locating an electrical feed robust enough to recharge his main battery.

He could not suggest anything to Keiko.

Sazabi began with a small investment. A few ‘free’ tasks he relented to do for her, without much fuss. Not all at once, or she would become suspicious. Keiko could not think that his actions were anything but authentic. The lies he employed to cover his actions were… interesting ones.

Still, the results were almost immediate. Unsettling. Something about her expression, tone of voice changed. It was the difference between running on fumes and smooth, high-quality fuel. Even as his own reserves were completely depleted.

But he could use this. He could work with this.

Keiko changed the nature of chores she assigned to Sazabi. They did become less taxing in nature. And less frequent. She still expected some trivial composition of ‘homework’ from him. If there was any bitter advantage in his dwindling power it was that his kinematics had to conserve force. She was delighted with the reduction in pencil casualties.

Some tasks were not tasks. Sometimes, she was content for him to simply… stand there. By her side, as _she_ worked.

She asked him to hold her offspring. Despite his obvious threat to her safety. He held as still as possible as he did this, moved only cautiously. And while he made a show about protesting, it was a less draining assignment than physical labor. Even if more risky. And more repulsive. At close range, it _breathed_ all over him.

(At least Keiko’s bondmate seemed to understand the hazards of handling the tiny creature. His panic at his young’s fragility in his hands had been among the most sensible reactions thus far. Even he was delicate with the noxious loaf.)

The key to surviving in this environment was to control his warden’s emotions. That was her weakness. An _actual_ opponent would keep control of them, and only let him think he was effective as far as it would serve them. But Keiko was an _exception_. She was too plain and open. And in ignorance of the rules of the game she could be duped as well as move outside his comprehensible bounds to torment him.

To control her emotions, he had to do what she wanted. He had to make her think _she_ was in control.

As an experiment, Sazabi logged all the tasks he had been given in the past two weeks and analyzed their frequency. Then he predicted which tasks his warden would soon ask of him. He swept the kitchen floor, dusted their ‘living-room’ (did they have a ‘dead-room?’), and removed their waste to the bin in the garage.

He did not tell Keiko. He just waited. And watched.

She surprised Sazabi when she did not take it for granted. She did not ask her bondmate if it had been his doing. She went straight to him, _knew_ it had been him.

She smiled and it was different and hideous.

“That was very thoughtful of you, Sazabi,” she said patiently. “Thank you for your help.”

He wanted to deny her and reveal his deception. But that would be foolish and undo any progress, impeded it in the future. So he had to accept her accusation. That he had been ‘thoughtful.’ It sunk into him. Damn, but now he had to keep up the facade. He helped the humans with their pathetic biofuel needs unbidden. He even made his best efforts to wash _dishes_.

Keiko was pleased with him. He _had_ to keep it up. He was under 10% power now, and despite that he did some few tasks on his own their frequency was nothing compared to assigned ones. The only thing better Keiko could do for him would be to relent, make a mistake, and reveal the electrical grid adapter.

-o-

She kept making these accusations. That he’d been 'thoughtful.' That he’d been ‘creative’ or fair.’ That he’d been ‘reasonable’ or even ‘nice.’

That he’d been ‘good.’

She repeated them as often as Sazabi gave her cause to do so. He couldn’t lie or contradict them. He dared not prove them false in his circumstance. They were piling up inside his armor.

-o-

He was disembodied. Watching from outside himself in the simulation. It was Stalemate, but not. It was a distended, confusing version. Where he watched himself make obvious mistakes. Watched himself slowly draw closer to Hell. Sazabi eliminated most of his own units because he saw only one flawed path to victory and it did not require them. He did not hear their suffering, only his own laughter.

-o-

“You did such a good job, Sazabi, I think you deserve the day off.”

Sazabi stared into space. 5%.

“Sazabi? Hello?”

Keiko was waving her hand in front of his face, again. “I’m sure, whatever, I’ll do it.”

“I said you did a good job. Take it easy, okay?”

Sazabi’s optic had to refocus on Keiko. “What?”

“Is your hearing working right? You d—”

“No,” Sazabi said. “I know what you said.”

He paused.

“Forget it.”

-o-

He recalibrated his energy gauge and it still read 5%. He felt 8% at least. For all he could measure, never running so low before. Whatever shallow talk like that could recharge, it wasn’t his battery keeping him warm.

-o-

It had been a mistake to help Keiko set up the human larvae’s 'birthday party.' It would have been a mistake to move at all at less than 1% available charge. But he’d consented anyway. He had to. He pushed through hostile conditions and low resources to do so. To succeed at the task.

To optimize strategic gains, and minimize loss. He was not sure what he was gaining or losing anymore. He was too tired to analyze.

When the task was done, Sazabi’s hazy perception lapsed. Then he held on. It was _imperative_ that he hold on. That they didn’t see anything wrong. He didn’t have to move. They wouldn’t care about that. He had to lie to them for a little longer. Whatever it was, the ‘birthday’ happened around him. He did not have the strength to stop it or to leave.

-o-

Sazabi revised his unordered list of personal crises.

  * It would be better if he was dead

  * He had failed in his major function.

  * He was being ordered around by organic beings.

  * He was to blame for his own defeat.

  * His soul drive was… changing state.

  * He was definitely going insane.




He struck one from his list.

  * ~~His battery was quickly running down with no source of fuel.~~




He added several items. He marked them as high priority.

  * * It was inevitable I would eventually encounter humans who would survive me.

  * * I am a slave to the Dark Axis.

  * ** I have always been a slave.

  * *** the Dark Axis has used me and now has discarded me.

  * **** slaves are without value. I am without value to the Dark Axis.

  * ****I have always been without value to the Dark Axis.

  * **** I am not a superior being. I am greater only than lesser slaves.

  * ***** I have never existed.

  * *********** He lied to me.

  * *Specifically about consuming ‘food.’




-o-

Was this what it was like to be a human?

Always only days away from dying?

-o-

Always weak?

Always _hungry, so hungry, needing, s t a r v i n g_

-o-

Sorry, so sorry.

 

He still hadn’t learned to beg an enemy for mercy.

-o-

But Keiko gave him fuel freely, once she understood. Because she was not an enemy. She was an opposite of that. You gave death to your enemies. She gave him life. Captain Gundam gave him life.

They were frien

d

s

-o-

Everything was suddenly simple to him.

Everything. Every task, every movement, every _thought_.

After so long of limited function, a full reserve of fuel and batteries at-capacity was an immeasurable delight. His good mood aside, he could not recall this level of operation. Even when brand-new. It made little sense, with so many of his components ripped out of him. He couldn’t even claim that his appearance had changed or been refurbished to lift his morale.

But with full processing capacity he was _beyond_ prodigy. The limits on his mind to protect his level of charge fell away. Theoretically he could map _so many_ targets now, sort them in an instant, prioritize and strategize backwards and forwards _effortlessly_. There was _no battle_ he could not win.  His security bolt was ignorant to these thoughts. He had metacontextualized the violence. It was not his priority to hurt anyone at the moment.

He could traverse Keiko’s house with only the slightest effort, despite his size. His awareness of size and physical positioning was vast, even outside combat. He could navigate the humans with relative ease. When they laughed, it wasn’t because he had made a mistake. It was because he required no more correction.

(That he knew of.)

It would have made sense to return to direct resistance, now that he was strong enough to put up a fight. Eager for a fight!

But he had lost every single one of these fights.

A perfect strategist did not employ losing tactics for their own sake.

-o-

Okay, a perfect strategist probably did not need to employ tactics that involved transplanting daffodils. But that was immaterial. Minor! Not even a setback. An advantage, even. It solicited a specific series of behaviors from Keiko that he was prepared to deal with easily.

Unless she had an unforeseen engagement and left him alone with the human spawn. Fine. She’d done other such foolish things before. This was nothing. He’d moved it only that morning with a somewhat creative maneuver and assistance from her bedding. He could handle it. He hadn’t broken a single plate all day.

He picked up the infant of his own free will and started talking to it.

-o-

He understood! He understood it _all_. Why he had lost, and how Neotopia had won. He had been focused on subduing the enemy’s resistance to achieve his single objective. Fixed on it. As if that was all there was. As if that was the measure of success of a Commander.

No! No, that was so _narrow_ , not _grand_ enough in scope.

Neotopia had an investment in its future. It cared about promoting prosperous outcomes: the result of many, _many_  sequential events. Cumulative battles in an ongoing war. Or, a more distasteful but local metaphor, cumulative flowers in a metaphorical garden.

His disruption of that? To him, it was everything: the beginning and end of his self. His campaign! His conquest.

To them?

Only one weed!

Perhaps he had been successful infesting other dimensions in the past. For that was the nature of weeds.

But Neotopia had plucked him as surely as it must have plucked any number in the past.

Sazabi was only _Stalemate_. He was on the level of the campaign. And his immediate superior had controlled all campaigns, all objectives. He controlled what was punished and what was not. What was curated within the Dark Axis, and what was not. What its future would hold. And to what ends all within _slaved away._ What to know and what to Fear.

Neotopia itself existed on that superior level. He did not.

Not yet, anyway.

They had done a very foolish thing, ripping him out of their new utopia only to replant him and try for a flower.

-o-

His mega particle cannon was already charging. He could not stop it.

He was a destroyer. He removed value from the world.

His function in service to the Dark Axis was to optimize gain and minimize loss.

He was antithetical to himself.

-o-

The human Mark was burning the meat. It was impossible for him to ignore. The combination of hydrocarbon fuel, charring flesh and… well, Sazabi didn’t know what _that_ was, but it was hideous. The smell drew him like a beacon.

It disturbed him, but he had developed an ‘appetite.’

It was difficult to impossible to berate the evasive human for nearly ruining _his_ meal, but if there was one thing that Mark could not dodge it was his offspring’s presence. Carrying her benefited Sazabi great advantage. It counted as a ‘chore’ and he easily evaded being tasked with anything tedious so long as he kept hold of her. And in confronting the father’s tiresome shenanigans, the daughter gave him at least a foothold if not the upper hand.

He’d thought so at first, anyway. He could remember how this human had looked at him, had brought a weapon against him. Now he smiled and _attempted humor_ and dared to _touch_ him in these brief, gregarious ways. He did these things to prove he could.

But his execution was as strange as Keiko’s behavior. He challenged, but did not present himself as an opponent. A form of competition that had no loser in it, just one who was at-odds temporarily.

“You already eat cake. We might as well add flesh to that list. Gotta keep up the killer robot persona, right?”

A confusing signal to him that they were of the same kind. A lofty assertion for such an unimpressive human. But one Sazabi…

“Hypocritical,” he said, looking down on Mark with all his distaste.

Enjoyed?

His resulting ‘argument’ with that man between him and that disgusting _food_ was to a point _pleasant._ Mark knew nothing of hierarchcal conflict within the Dark Axis. His benign position may have been exotic, but his propensity for conflict was not. Sazabi had no equal, and so had never engaged in _banter_ of any kind. It had been insulting for Captain Gundam to attempt it!

But here he was. In the Dark Axis, it was commonplace to see a duo of operatives, rivals from complimentary squadrons, units from the same production lot, bondmates, progenitor-and-progeny squabble. It was a constant testing of their power against one another. If one became more aggressive and killed the other, they were no longer suited.

It was in their interest to maintain and affirm this balance. Sazabi, alone in excellence, was mad perpetuating it on these humans.

But they gave him the steak. It took shameful measures of self-control to resist swallowing it right in front of them.

“Just try not to inhale the whole thing at once.”

“I’m just going to throw it away when you’re not looking.”

“Just like you did with that entire plate of cookies? And the two pies? And the candied ham?”

The plate of cookies had been entirely _unguarded._  The two pies were superfluous and the humans did not need them as much as he’d needed the energy at the time. The ‘candied ham’ had no real explanation behind it other than that he was revolting and it had been _delicious._

He decided to disengage. Sazabi turned away from Mark’s mockeries only to get a phone camera in his face.

Click! Sazabi froze, unable to grab the thing away from Keiko with food in one hand and a delighted, cooing infant in the other.

“Oh, don’t get worked up,” Keiko said. She’d noticed his change in posture, how he was straightening up to better tower over her. “It’s a good picture. See?”

She turned the phone around so he could see its display. He did not agree that it was a picture of any particular quality. He filled its space. Nana was smiling obliviously at her mother. He was missing decals and battle armor in disgrace. But he looked earnest, as far as a still frame could communicate. Sazabi considered demanding she destroy this picture. It was evidence of his worsening food habit.

Then it occurred to him that this image contained absolutely no trace of his designated function. And yet he still was the subject. That was what this human saw, when she looked at him.

It was proof that he existed.

“Get a better angle next time,” he said.

“With what?” Keiko raised one eyebrow. “A ladder?”

Sazabi lifted his head to the blue, blue sky and rolled his optic, as if indicating she was to be launched into space immediately. She only waved after him as he marched on his heavy feet out of her presence.

“Don’t forget to come back for seconds,” she promised.

Blast her.

He turned the corner of the house, opened his oral hatch, and with one swift movement he had tipped the plate up and the steak on it disappeared. Bone and all. He could feel it process, ‘taste’ the chemical analysis. It slid down his gullet, pulverized by diamond-tipped grinders until it dropped hideously into the incinerator that was his ‘stomach.’

His emissions were minimal, but a faint wisp of steam escaped as he sealed his powerful ‘jaws.’

“You didn’t see anything,” he said to the infant.

She had fallen asleep in his hand.

“Of course,” he muttered. He considered opening the side door and putting her away. He also considered flinging the plate into the bushes below. But he’d have to go retrieve it again and it would add hassle to a day he immensely looked forward to.

He’d somehow manipulated them into giving him flight back. In a few hours! Fury that they’d taken that ability remained, yes. But there was a more constructive perspective. It was new potential. If he could make them do that, what else could he re-order in this Hell?

Sazabi looked up. From this side of the house, he could see the installation of Neotopia Tower. They had been sure to remove the distant ruins of his Horn of War first.

It was the imagined demons that expressed all power within a Hell, and here he was. Taking it from them. Making them serve his needs. Until it was no longer a Hell at all and he no longer existed within it to suffer.

He was willing to play however many games it took to make this environment his own.

As for Hell?

Well, it was exactly what humans would invent. For the same reason they would invent a Paradise. They were one and the same. When humans presumed _Paradise_ , it excluded their opponents. It would _not be_ Paradise if the enemy was there. Thus, Hell was merely the part of Paradise where they put their hatred, their jealousy. Where they imagined themselves the victor, they would contain the loser they wished to destroy.

The demons in hell were the very same angels of utopia. To the loser, to the winner of a zero-sum game.

-o-

The one in the darkness looked through a rifle’s scope.

The Commander Sazabi was in his sights. Standing there in the bright sunlight, unguarded. Ignorant to his presence. Entirely vulnerable. He would not bestow his subordinate with any tool that could not be requisitioned and then hidden from them.

The specs of this weapon were adequate. One shot would at least disable the Commander. Two might be required, at maximum, to kill him. He had predicted the organics correctly. Eventually, they would find no purpose in keeping what they could not use. They had brought this weapon to eliminate him.

Curious that they did not follow-through with their conviction.

If one wanted something done correctly, Gerbera posited, one would have to do it themselves.

Gerbera felt the trigger through proxy hands. Then off-center in his sights, he noticed a small object that his finest creation was holding.

A dirty organic. A human, one of their children. It was immobile, sleeping perhaps.

Profane! Unacceptable before the General.

He had already seen enough. This unit, that had shown promise beyond all others, was clearly defective now. The humans had ruined it. Corrupted it. They controlled it now.

The longer he stared at that ugly little creature, the more his circuits shuddered. A parasite. Even looking at it through gunsights disgusted him to the core.

He pulled his aim up to the Commander’s unprotected neck. But the unit had moved. Gerbera zoomed out, saw a human woman had appeared by the Commander’s side. The two beings should never have been in proximity. Gerbera watched as his finest weapon did nothing to harm the vermin he had been designed to eradicate. He handed off the infant to her. They began to walk away together, side by side.

Gerbera could have pulled that lonely trigger.

But he did not.

He knew now, how to best destroy this failure.


End file.
